


The Whore of Babylon

by SpaceGoat



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Prison, Blasphemy, Blood, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Canon-Typical Violence, Capital Punishment, Choking, Cults, Dirty Talk, Disassociation, F/M, Fondling, Gun Violence, Hallucinations, Handcuffs, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Breakdown, Murder, Organ Transplantation, Police Brutality, Post-Canon, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Scars, Serial Killers, Sexual Tension, Sexual Violence, Surgery, mentions of cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2020-09-19 05:33:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20325931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceGoat/pseuds/SpaceGoat
Summary: ...And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. - BOOK OF REVELATIONFive years have passed since the Hope County Massacres soaked blood into the hills of Montana, and the Seed family, convicted for their numerous crimes, are scattered. Rotting in prisons across the country, awaiting execution at the hands of the state.Olive Kestler hides a secret past. That of communes and chapels and confessions, one which she was torn away from as a child, but never truly relinquished. Now a criminal psychology grad student, she sees a saint soon to be martyred within her reach... and nothing will stop her from getting a taste of the life she longs for, and the condemned man she finds herself obsessed with.Canon Divergent/Prison AU.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! 
> 
> Now, I KNOW I'm meant to be writing Icarus and Styx, but I rediscovered this story I'd started earlier this year, and just HAD to finish and share it. I adore a good prison AU, and I needed John in that situation as soon as possible... No fear though, I&S is still going forth, and I have written quite a bit of chapter 8!
> 
> First disclaimer, more a shoutout- to the person, and I'm sorry but I cannot remember who, who suggested 'Nathaniel' as John's middle name. It's totally canon for me now and I've used it here. Shout out to you.
> 
> Also disclaimer: I'm from England and my knowledge of the US legal system and prison system... well, ANY legal/prison system... is entirely based on documentaries, TV shows and Wikipedia. I researched all the questions that came up, locations, legal terms and such, but I apologise for inaccuracies and/or British-isms that may poke through.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> Thanks to Tybss, my beta reader!

**NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 24TH 2019**

It has been a trying eight months for the survivors of the atrocities that shattered Hope County, Montana last fall. But early this morning, at the Missoula State Courthouse, they can breathe a sigh of relief, as sentences were finally delivered upon the perpetrators of the heinous crimes that shocked the world.

Federal Judge Marco Delarosa, a veteran of the Montana court system, visibly struggled to hold back his disgust, as he pronounced sentence over Project at Eden’s Gate leader, Joseph Seed and his siblings, who were found guilty of cult related domestic terrorism in April.

In a turn of events generally unheard of in a state unwilling to so liberally condemn an offender to death, Judge Delarosa passed down a quadruple capital sentence upon the members of the Seed family. Unable to look past hundreds of eyewitness accounts of mutilation, psychological torture, murder, and kidnapping, as well as the death of US Federal Marshall Cameron Burke, Delarosa remarked:

“Upon realising that you could not disprove your guilt, you attempted instead to win sympathy from this court. You described a great number of childhood abuses as motive for your behaviour. You asked that the psychological impact of these events be considered as mitigating factors, adjusting your ‘not guilty’ plea to that of GBMI, Guilty But Mentally Ill.”

He further continued:

“These grievances against you do not and will not allow us to excuse your actions, or encourage us to forgive. You acted in full cognitive capacity, believing yourselves above the law. Your disregard for human life and for authority, your commitment to impose suffering on the innocent, and your lack of remorse in every respect, are worthy of nothing but death.”

The four convicted- Joseph Seed (45), Jacob Seed (47), John Seed (33) and the latest in the cult’s ceremonial ‘sister’ role of ‘Faith Seed’, Rachel Jessop (25)- had long been the target of an FBI investigation. However no concrete evidence could ever be brought against them to file charges. Indeed earlier in the legal process, with once rising lawyer John Seed providing the defence, it appeared that, even with such overwhelming evidence presented, they would once again be acquitted.

Nevertheless, the revelation of video footage taken from the cult’s ‘confessions’ and ‘trials’, solidified the case against them. The footage was initially thought destroyed in the massacres, but resurfaced thanks to recovery efforts by arresting officer, Deputy Rook of the Hope County Sheriff’s Department.

Upon delivery of the sentence, the condemned joined hands and knelt in prayer, with Joseph Seed proclaiming that they were ‘chosen by God, cleansed of sin. No prison can stifle our faith’. Bailiffs quickly separated and removed them from the chamber.

Surviving Project members- or ‘Peggies’ to the locals- are gathering outside the courthouse this evening in support of their leaders, who they claim have been ‘scapegoated by the US government’ and ‘martyred for their faith’.

As they await their execution dates, the Seed siblings are to be separated and, with no maximum security facility currently located in Montana, incarcerated across the United States. Judge Delarosa ruled that they are to have no contact, and are to be placed under psychological observation.

It is thought that their cases will be rushed through, in an effort to deter repercussions from their radical followers. They still retain the right to appeal.

It has been a divisive and controversial case, but for the families of those who were so brutally taken, this can feel like nothing but justice.

* * *

She had studied the mugshot on the prisoner file for hours.

Stared into those devouring eyes, seduced into their depths as so many had been before her. They were not cold or unfeeling. Just… sad. Achingly so. An empty blue that had never known love. Even when he’d flashed a smile at the jury, with a shine that matched his Louboutin dress shoes, his eyes had not smiled with him.

The file now rested precariously on the passenger seat, stacked atop what was currently passing as her thesis. Witness testimonies from Hope County Law Enforcement, locals by the names of Rye, Jeffries, Black, Fairgrave, Lader, Drubman… even a half-assed report by some CIA operative who’d just sat back and let a local Deputy do all the work. Scrawls of midnight inspiration and a laptop so ancient, it may well have predated the steam train. She’d wanted a new one, slimlined and shiny and seven hundred dollars worth of prestige above her classmates, but had begrudgingly decided that she’d never make her deadline if she’d starved to death.

“Don’t you know, Olive, that _ greed is a sin _!” She shrieked out of the open window to the empty desert, voice carrying over the noise of the rushing wind and slightly fuzzy radio.

She laughed heartily at her own joke.

The gates of ADX Florence came looming into view, and she thought of just driving straight through them, dragging metal and wire behind her all the way to the ugly square buildings at the end of the drive.

It was cruel, the task that lay before her, and certainly not approved by the court.

Well, most would see it as cruel. But she resolved it necessary. Intriguing. An _ experiment _. He may be a ‘monster’, incapable of empathy and barren of regret, but she’d seen the affection he’d held for his brothers from the courtroom observation gallery. The deference and devotion. The way he’d cast that desperate gaze to them when their verdicts were delivered, as if afraid that they might be looking back with disappointment. Or resentment. Or that they might not look back at him at all.

He deserved to know.

He was the holiest of men, brother to a prophet_ . _ A _ Messiah. _

That, and it would make her thesis just all the more _ enthralling _.

Her foot flinched momentarily, intrusive impulses almost getting the better of her… then she hit the turn signal and coasted the corner onto the approach.

Control, in all things. 

She’d worked too hard to blow it all on a whim.

“I am a man of constant sorrow, I’ve seen trouble all my day…” She sang along with the Soggy Bottom Boys’ reedy vocals as she reached for her student identification, and steeled herself for the disdain her forthcoming bullshit would inevitably face. She wasn’t ashamed to admit she had a playlist themed to her muses. She’d even sourced recordings of the Eden’s Gate hymns and had delighted in hearing of her apparent impending death being sung with such joy. It helped her relax. Felt familiar. Soothing.

The guard at the gate raised a hand to stop her car, and approached. 

She tried to look as official as possible. Shoulders back. Loose strands of ginger hair tucked behind her ears. Blouse smoothed down, one button on her jacket fastened. Confident twinkle in the eye. Soda cans and Pop Tart wrappers kicked under the seat. She wasn’t above flirting if necessary.

She _ had a court order. _

If she believed it, they’d believe it.

She wondered what the minimum time served was for lying to the guards at a Supermax facility. _ Definitely won’t be making that deadline then _, she humoured to herself, trying to ignore the freckles already blossoming across her face as the sun warmed her skin.

“State your name and business, ma’am.” The officer drawled, as though he said it a thousand times a day, as if he wasn’t stood slow roasting under the searing Arizona sun.

“Olive Kestler. I have an appointment with Warden Aubree, in regards to a private consultation with one of the prisoners here.”

She displayed her ID card with a flourish and the guard squinted at it over his sunglasses.

“You drive all the way from Berkeley?”

“Yes sir.”

“You know interviews aren't permitted? Warden’s pretty hardass ‘bout that sort of thing.”

“I am aware. Thought I could persuade her.”

He now leant down with his elbow leaning on the window frame, and she could smell the chewing tobacco that was rolling between his back teeth. It made her heart flutter, rejuvenating memories of handsome faces, stark communes, old wooden crucifixes and the crack of absolution on the apostate’s back. A home long abandoned. A choice not her own.

Perhaps she’d smell it again when he was slapping cuffs on her?

“These bastards are dangerous, Miss Kestler. There's no talk of robbin’ TVs or carjacking between ‘em. Fact, there's no talk at all, if we can help it. You sure you want to? Young girl like you? Even if Warden’s feeling so generous as to let you in, one of ‘em pulls a shank and...” He clicked his fingers to illustrate his point.

_ Typical _ , she thought. _ Resorting to patronising and belittling, when women my age all over the country are also behind bars _ . _ Fuelled by the devil, riddled with sin... and thankfully probably shanking guards who treat them like children too. _

Biting back her comments, Olive gave him a placid smile. Resolute to the last. Then, gritting her teeth, with a sweet singsong voice, she reclaimed her ID from his outstretched hand and said:

“Nothing will be able to shake loose the stones cemented in place by our faith.”

“Jesus? No wait, Moses?” The guard guessed, as he pulled back from the window and signalled for the gate to be opened. 

As the gate hummed to a standstill, her foot poised above the gas pedal, she prayed that her weathered copy of the Father’s Word wouldn’t play turncoat and slide out from where she had concealed it.

“Yeah, someone like that.”

* * *

Olive rubbed at her fingertip, the skin still tingling from being pressed too forcefully against a high-tech biometric scanner. She was astutely aware that the man at the visitor's entrance desk was probably now neck deep in the police files from her youth. 

Psychiatrist reports. Court testimonies. A video that her mother had forced her to film, denouncing their family and their beliefs. Though the footage was faded, tinged amber with age, the tears that swelled in the corner of her eyes were still very much visible.

Oh, how she’d wanted to go home.

There was nothing but an empty chair facing her, but she suddenly felt back in that police interrogation room. Scarlet light blinking on a cheap camera, like the eye of a dispassionate deity. It still watched now, only it had bred with curiosity and suspicion and multiplied into the corners of the room.

Walls painted a clinical white.

The floor had never seen a rug in its life.

There were gashes that sunk deep into the plaster by the door frames, where someone’s nails had sought sanctuary as they were dragged out. They seemed old to Olive, as if the men she knew surrounded her, stacked side by side in concrete coffins, had been trying to claw their way out for thousands of years. But there was still blood streaked through the white paint where the skin had shredded with the friction.

Olive suddenly craved peppermint.

The door buzzed open, and Warden Claire Aubree strode into view.

“Ms Kestler?” She spat from her stronghold in the doorway, as if she already meant to show her out. Olive briefly wondered if she’d somehow read her mind, and was here to satisfy her palate with a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints.

Her thoughts preoccupied with cookies, she momentarily forgot her tongue, and before she could loosen it, eyes like mercury bore into her gawking face.

“Impressive. A psychology major who can’t string a sentence together. You got a poster of Ted Bundy or something and fancied yourself a criminal psychologist? I don’t have time for this. Get on with it, or get out.”

Olive had faced intimidation before, felt fear in the presence of cops and doctors and priests, who had each insisted that they knew best for her. Drew blood from her malnourished veins. Searched deep within her irises as if being born into world of modesty and abstinence would present colours within them that had never been seen in this Sodom. The way she saw it, there was no place for fear in the world of men. Not, but the fear of God. And so, summoning the child that so firmly held to that faith, she outstretched her hand and firmly took grasp of the Warden’s.

“Elizabeth Bathory.”

“Excuse me?”

“My pinup of choice, Warden Aubree. I like my serial killers raw and marinating, not chargrilled by the state. I like the ones with a penchant for the poetic and the gothic. The spiritual. The ritual. Not just hacking girls up to stuff them in a trunk, but an appreciation for the art of suffering. For the belief that death should be as perfectly crafted as conception.”

It was barely noticeable, but Aubree’s other hand twitched towards her pocket, where no doubt her cell phone, or a decade old pager lay nestled amongst paperclips, cigarettes and lint.

_ That’s right, order me a psych eval _, she silently dared. The renowned Doctor Robert Hare, proprietor of psychopaths in prisons everywhere, wouldn’t hesitate after a speech like that, so cold and drowning in macabre admiration. He’d seize her as his own, her mind his to decode.

Olive wondered if she would score a perfect 40.

Just as _ he _had.

Those blue eyes so sad, but of sadness only for himself.

Perhaps they _ could _truly be the same.

But she wasn’t here to get locked up, to have her arms bound with buckles so she couldn’t tear her hair from her scalp, or scratch the flesh from her wrists. To sate her curiosity for submission, for cold metal restraints, for how it truly felt knowing that _ you _were the shit on society’s boots. She wasn’t here to be lobotomised or brainwashed, or undergo whatever Nurse Ratched-esque methodologies they could devise for her. 

And so Olive’s face split into a smile, the orthodontist’s handiwork like the mouth of a venus flytrap. Honeyed and enticing, her lies ready to ensnare the unsympathetic Warden.

And she laughed.

“I’m kidding, of course. Although, if that was all a bit too much for you, then I can be a Bundy girl if you want? Make things more _ relatable… _ sorry, _ comprehensible _?”

Aubree, perturbed, finally pulled her hand away. Olive felt the stale air hit her sweaty palm. She resisted every urge to wipe it on her jacket.

“What do you _ want _, Ms Kestler?”

Time for a full 180.

_ This should be fun. _ She couldn’t contain a smug smile.

“So glad you asked. Try not to look too awestruck at my noble, selfless soul, but I’m actually here on humanitarian grounds.”

After that prologue, it sounded ludicrous. And that was apparent all over Warden Aubree’s face. Olive wondered if she’d look that tired when she got to 45.

“Humanitarian?” It was the Warden’s turn to laugh. “You hardly seem like Mother Teresa with that attitude of yours. And in case you haven’t noticed, Ms Kestler, half the men in here are waiting to get put down. Like dogs who tear kids’ throats out. ‘Human’ has got nothing to do with it. Nothing human about what they did, any of them.” 

“That might be your opinion, Warden, but it’s not mine. I think to sin _ is _to be human. And a little rehabilitation, a chance to atone for one's sins, goes a long way.”

“And what makes you think I give a shit about what your opinion is?”

Seems pleasantries are over, Olive smirked.

“OK. You don’t have to give a shit about me. But I’m sure it will make your day to know that I have friends in high places who require you to acquiesce to my demands. Given the official documentation, naturally.”

She turned to make a big show of rifling through her purse to find a pen, red ink for added flair. Then, she flicked it out in front of her, offering it to the Warden to take.

“I assume you don’t carry a pen in those white Chanel pants of yours.”

Aubree paused before snatching it reluctantly. Olive’s attention moved to the pile of papers she’d brought with her, but she could almost feel the wrath, like hellfire, blistering beside her through the Warden’s veins. She wondered if it might fester and present itself as a single boil upon her nose. The vessels close to the skin, a perfect place for a pustulating revenge.

No more fantasies, Olive commanded herself. Remember the task at hand…

The Herald who awaits.

“I have a court order from Judge Delarosa in Missoula, also signed by Warden Styler at Atwater Penitentiary, granting me access to a prisoner for a short time.”

She reached deep within the most official looking file she’d owned, and triumphantly revealed the document. Signed, and sealed and totally not purchased from a sexually frustrated graphic design student in exchange for a blow job.

One phone call, and she’d be fucked.

Aubree did not even flinch at the sight of it.

“A grad student with a court order?” The distrust in her voice would have made mountains retreat back into the earth. Job requirement: must have been a gorgon in a previous life, Olive thought.

“Yes. I've been interning at Atwater as part of my thesis, and recent events led to an appeal by myself at a prisoner's behest, to the aforementioned individuals.”

“How generous of you.”

“Well, I'd been working closely with the prisoner for some months. He was a case study. And, well, gingers have to stick together, you see. It’s like a bro code, but, you know, a ginger code.”

_ Shit. _ Olive momentarily wished she had friends she could have run lines with. She bit the inside of her cheeks, hoping to squash her _ really _stupid comments deep within their slick walls.

Seems a single improv class didn’t quite cut it when you were trying to infiltrate the most secure penitentiary in the United States.

A quick prayer.

_ “I can do all this through him who gives me strength…” _

The slight tremor in her confidence eased, and Olive could only hope that no aftershocks would follow.

“I require your signature, Warden.”

She presented the court order, held casually between two fingers.

The pencil-thin Warden snatched the legal-yet-totally-illegal document and glanced over it. It took only seconds before her rouged lips pursed. Disapproval set deep in her face, murky and impenetrable, like storm clouds cascading over an ocean in an Aivazovsky painting.

“You want to talk to Seed.” She stated flatly, visibly making her mind up to prevent this from occurring at all costs.

Olive quivered slightly at the acknowledgement of his presence within the building.

“Yes. And the _ court _ wants me to talk to Seed.”

“Atwater…?”

The pieces clicked into place within the Warden’s brain, and Aubree thrust the page back into Olive's hand. Well, felony forgery appears to be off the table, she breathed silently to herself.

“The judge ruled no contact between the Seeds. _ Ever _ . Not even through a third party. Too high a risk. Everything that family says incites violence and religious fanaticism, and those are two things most _ definitely _ unwelcome in facilities like this.”

“You’ve seen the news. You know as well as I do that _ neither _ of those apply here-”

“I’m not about to violate the terms of incarceration for sentimentality-”

Olive gestured fixedly at the Warden, with the self confidence of charlatan running for Senate.

“You remember it was Judge Delarosa who tried the Hope County Massacres case four years ago? Well, no contact was his ruling then, yes, but time lends perspective, Warden, and retrospection brings introspection. I have his signature here to prove it.”

“And I suppose you facilitated this change of heart, with that ‘noble, selfless soul’ of yours?”

“Well... I can be _ very _ persuasive.”

Olive was having way too much fun in character, but suddenly sensed that she was quickly losing the Warden’s patience. Especially when the woman pivoted and took two sauntering steps back towards the door.

“I've yet to see the evidence of that, Ms Kestler. Wit does _ not _ equate to charm, and the demands of a judge out of state does not equate to _ you _ getting access to my prisoners. _ Especially _Seed. He’s dangerous. To you, to my staff, and to himself.”

“I know, ma’am, but frankly... I don’t give a _ shit _.”

The foul language tasted oddly sweet in her mouth.

Warden Aubree folded her arms, but her tone as she responded to Olive’s vulgarity was quieter. As if she was afraid the inmates could hear her losing her temper through the walls.

“Well you should. I don’t know how much you know, but Seed wasn’t initially incarcerated here. He’s a transfer from Beaumont in Texas. Attacked a guard there with a razor blade, cut _ Matthew 10:21 _ into the officer’s _ face _ . He’s irrational. He craves attention. Hurts himself. You thought he was psychotic before? Could tell something was fundamentally _ wrong _with him, even under all the smiles and designer suits? Well, prison has ravaged what little sanity he had. Turns out solitary confinement isn’t so solitary when there’s voices in your head.”

_ Don’t be a smart ass, don’t be a smart ass… _

“Actually, I think that’s the other brother.”

Aubree smiled.

“Not the voice of God, Ms Kestler… but old genteel Atlanta folk crying ‘devil spawn, thy soul be damned’ or whatever bullshit home-edited scripture the bible-bashing sort give out.”

This was news to Olive. She’d always known that his experiences with his parents had to have haunted him somehow, but were they manifesting as hallucinations? Making him cry out in the dark? Did he still feel their whips on his back as he prayed, hear the chanting of exorcisms in the cloisters of some hidden temple? She desperately wanted to start making notes. Every detail made her tremble with a rush of exhilaration.

“Do they speak to him often, these voices?”

“Every damn hour of the day, according to our psychologist. He’ll probably be waving goodbye to them when they strap him to that gurney.”

“_ If _they do.”

Aubree rolled her eyes.

“Oh, I didn’t realise you were one of _ those _ humanitarians. He’s done fighting it, Ms Kestler. He’s waived his rights to appeal. Like it or not, he’s getting that cocktail, _ just like his brother did _. But we’re getting off topic, the topic being I don’t give a damn what change of heart Delarosa had. You’re not getting anywhere near my prisoner.”

Olive went to retort, but her mouth closed swiftly up. Instead, she reached for her purse and tenderly removed a small metallic box. Aubree eyed it suspiciously, despite knowing that it had been poked and prodded and scanned by security until kingdom come.

The red eyes of the gods reflected on its surface.

A shuddering breath.

Last chance.

New tactic.

“Warden. I get it. I don't exactly make a great first impression. God knows how my mother put up with me-”

“- You know, I think I actually _ pity _ her- _ ” _

“-_ But-” _ Olive pressed on, “I don't have to tell you that I'm not here for my damn thesis, or for a battle of wits with you. I'm here because Judge Delarosa found room in his shrivelled little heart for a bit of _ humanity _ . He found the time to listen to the pleas of, yeah, a Darwin fanboy who probably should have stuck to mutilating birds rather than people, but also a desperate, _ lonely _ man. And he only asked that I could come here, with _ this _.”

She slid the top open, to reveal the contents within, and the recognition on Aubree’s face was undeniable. There was something else too… _I think that’s_ _disappointment, _Olive analysed.

_ Guess my gift isn’t illegal enough for her to arrest me. _

Olive hid her cargo away again, as if the air would taint it.

“He asked me to give it to one of the only two people who _ ever _ truly mattered to him, and to someone who he knew was suffering _ far _ more than he was. And so charm or no charm, court order or no court order, I made a promise to a _ friend _.”

One final kick up Aubree’s emotionless ass, one last strike to get her to cry out… that is, to _ break _.

“And I intend to see my friend’s last wish done.”

Boom. 

Straight to the heart.

Still fixated on the box, Warden Aubree’s shoulders dropped slightly at the sudden soft sincerity Olive had masterfully delivered, courtesy of binge watching hours of General Hospital. She realised she may have overdone it slightly with the reference to humanity, and the word ‘plea’ gave her hives, but she hardly had time for director's notes.

“And that's it? That's all you're here for? To give Seed that?”

Jackpot.

“Yes.”

“And to tell him what happened?”

“Yes. If it were you, wouldn't you want to know?”

The Warden started to scrutinise Olive’s face, as if suddenly fully understanding what had just been said. As if she knew something wasn’t quite right… but Olive knew the specificity of such a visit, of the tragic circumstances in which she came, of the unmistakable gift she bore… such a scenario was _ surely _too obscure to be untrue.

And that was her greatest advantage.

“You? _ Friends _ with _ him _?” The question was more incredulous that derisive.

“Call it a mutual respect.”

“You respected _ Jacob fucking Seed?” _

Olive tucked the box back into her bag, and moved again towards her documentation. She had already wasted enough time. The longer she delayed and quipped, the closer an incriminating investigative phone call was. The sooner they would realise that she was nothing more than a devoted hobbyist... a _ fangirl, _though that term irritated her.

Even the paper felt impatient between her fingers.

“What did I say, I like the ones with a little something extra. Jacob? Atheist cult leader and PTSD ridden sociopath, obsessed this nihilistic strength that he’d _ literally _ ripped from another guy with his teeth?”

Olive slid the court order back before the Warden, the dotted line for the final signature like a ticker tape of temptation.

“Too good to resist.”

Aubree gave one final withering look at this infuriatingly quick witted upstart, and seemed as though she would make for the door again. But Olive knew she couldn’t ignore a formal authorisation from a federal judge.

Especially not one about something so trivial as the bequeathing of items.

She had _ won. _

Glaring at the offending paper, and releasing a sigh that probably caused her lungs to shrivel and pale, like flowers in the desert, Aubree yielded. Obviously wanting this troublemaker off her property, and _ fast. _Resigned, she bent over to sign her name, then tossed the pen onto the table. Olive watched it skitter across the smooth surface.

“You get twenty minutes.”

Leaning in, and lowering her voice, she snarled:

“If he hurts you, it’s my ass on the line, so you do exactly what my officers tell you to do, OK?”

With a triumphant smile, Olive slipped the form back amongst her papers, and slammed the ring binder shut.

“Yes, ma’am.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! Welcome to part two of three! Lots of John to come, so buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride! Prison!John is literally the reason this whole thing started, I wanted sad, alone John and I wanted him in handcuffs hahaha. So it felt very satisfying to finally write this, and I hope it's just as satisfying to read! 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's shown interest in my little AU!
> 
> And I hope you enjoy!

**THE WASHINGTON POST, JUNE 3RD 2023**

Citizens of Hope County, Montana, today marked the five year anniversary of the horrific massacre that resulted in the deaths of 1,146 people.

The two hour ceremony took place at an old amphitheatre along the Henbane River, the southeast region of the county. The stars and stripes were hung high over a newly commissioned memorial, detailing the names of the deceased, with a statue of local canine hero, Boomer, sat at the base with his head bowed. Local Pastor Jerome Jeffries led the congregation in prayer, while others offered eulogies and testimonies. Retired sheriff Earl Whitehorse offered a moving tribute to all the fallen, including a particularly poignant moment for Virgil Minkler, the county mayor who gave his life in the service of his people.

Mr Whitehorse, to this day, wears a Hope County Cougars baseball team button, the symbol of their resistance, in honour of Mr Minkler’s memory.

Thoughts were also unusually extended to the fallen of the Project at Eden’s Gate, the cult whose violent activities provided the tinder for the conflict that devastated the local community.

During the service, it was revealed to those present, that one of the men convicted for the atrocities- Jacob Seed (52)- had waived his rights to appeal his conviction some months ago, and thus had been delivered a date of execution.

The date and time have been formally issued as July 19th, at 01:00am.

The execution will proceed at Atwater Penitentiary, California. It will be attended by the current Warden, Mr Leonard Styler, Governor Marcia Wells of California and Governor Rick Watney of Montana, alongside noted survivors of the massacre.

Jacob Seed is a veteran of the Iraq War, and was honourably discharged in 2008 on psychological grounds. Mr Seed was styled the chief of defense for the Project at Eden’s Gate. He stockpiled weapons and indoctrinated Project members to kill, including children as young as 15, using a classical conditioning methodology. He also subjected those unwilling to join the Project to initiation rituals known as ‘trials’, where they would be forced to hunt and kill each other in order to survive.

Seed, with his co-defendants- younger brothers Joseph and John Seed, alongside Rachel Jessop- was sentenced to death in September 2019 having been convicted of domestic terrorism charges. Jessop’s capital sentence was commuted to life without parole late last year, after a successful appeal.

* * *

The room Olive Kestler had been led to was much the same as the last- tooth achingly sterile. Functional. Soulless. Like a dentist’s surgery, only without the colourful posters to heed the dangers of not flossing, or a friendly nurse ready to cheerfully probe your gums with a sharp instrument. No, it was a void graced only by those bearing sedatives, subpoenas, and last rites. Family visits weren’t all that common in places like this.

Normal people don’t admit being related to the guy who planted the bomb.

Olive would give anything to still be in contact with _ her _ exciting relatives.

She had noticed that since passing through the front door, she hadn’t seen the sky. Not once. There were no windows, no skylights, not even a television screen with a top-heavy weather girl pouting at the camera in front of CGI vistas of clouds. She wondered if it was midday by now, if maybe she’d get lunch. Prison food wasn’t exactly meant to be the pinnacle of fine dining, but she could really go for some unidentified meat slop right now. Or a hunk of stale cornbread. Maybe they’d even treat her to a pudding pot, or strawberry jello, if she handed over ten dollars commissary fees.

Glancing down at her watch, she saw that it was almost a quarter past ten.

A whole hour after her meeting with Warden Aubree.

Of course, the prison system’s very own Cersei Lannister would make her _ wait. _No doubt she was watching her every move over the sophisticated security system. Drinking wine from a goblet made from the skull of a correctional officer who’d not tucked his shirt in or been caught passing chewing gum to an inmate or some other negligible misdemeanor that she’d thrown down the hammer of justice for.

Slightly hoping that rubble would fall in on her, (anything to make this endless stasis more interesting) Olive counted the ceiling tiles, and recounted. She’d tapped out the rhythm to _ Let the Water Wash Away Your Sins _using a couple of pencils on the edge of the table. She wrote page numbers on the corner of her notes. She blew bubbles with her spit. She double checked that the dictaphone in her bag was switched on with the sensitivity all the way up.

Twenty minutes later, just as she was starting to get really restless, pacing like a panther in a zoo, the door buzzed open and a skeletal figure traipsed into view, flanked by two guards.

Glowering at her.

Olive felt the breath suddenly rush from her lungs, like they’d been punctured with a million tiny needles simultaneously. Her heart was palpitating. The blood rushing to her head. _ Don’t fucking faint Olive Kestler _ , _ you’re better than that. _

She couldn’t believe it was really him, just standing there. An actual human being, who _ exists, _not just a face on a tabloid or a checkmated king in a courtroom game of chess.

_ John Nathaniel Seed. _

Herald of Eden. Baptist. Inquisitor.

Now inmate at ADX Florence, the devil’s asshole, and dead man walking.

Olive immediately decided that orange wasn’t his colour. There wasn’t exactly a _ tangerine orange _ horseman of the forthcoming apocalypse, was there?

He was clean shaven, which threw her a bit. She hadn’t been expecting such a baby face, and suddenly that sad stare seemed even more like a kicked puppy. Those eyes, still so blue, were hollowed out in their sockets, sunken from excessive weight loss. Stress probably, or hunger strike? Olive appreciated the logic. The guy seemed to have a self-destruction kink, and she had already witnessed first hand that prison could be so _ boring _. A little pleasure would go a long way.

And when you’re fucked anyway, why prolong the inevitable?

Patches of his hair was thinning, where he’d torn at it in the throes of a nightmare, or psychotic episode. There was a cut on his lip, fresh, still pulling a little. Probably from restraint by officers. Perhaps the reason for their delayed arrival was resistance on his part? Where the long sleeves of his white undershirt were rolled up, a cotton pad was taped to his right arm. Blood test maybe? Medication for those hallucinations Aubree had talked of?

_ Or practise for the big day _, Olive humoured.

Oh, those _ tattoos. _ He was… _ art. _Apollo incarnate. Even those that were fractured by scars or hidden under the bandage were still beautiful.

She noted that his nails were clipped, lest he decided to bisect any more of them, or scratch his own eyes out and bleed to death.

Funny how they’d stop him from putting _ himself _in the ground, yet authorise a lackey from the state to do it instead. Wasn’t that just more work for everyone?

The hands those nails were embedded into were shackled in front of him, wrists rubbed raw by the steel, scuffing like sandpaper across pale lines where he’d attempted to slit them once. A chain clung tautly around his waist, dribbling down his legs to where manacles weighed his feet down. He rattled as he walked… well, _ shuffled _. Olive imagined that same sound would ring out if his bones were cast from the iron that the Gates of Eden were forged from.

How the mighty had fallen.

He looked like a heroin addict.

Although, it was kind of… _ hot. _

She wished they’d gone all the way and gagged him, Hannibal Lector style. Fava beans, and a nice chianti. Hear him hiss beneath it. But then she wouldn’t be able to taste the torments that tongue was going to bring forward.

Little sacrifices, larger rewards, she thought.

Her pen itched in her blazer pocket.

“Miss... Kestler?” The taller guard probed, and she nodded sharply in response.

The guards, with very little effort at all, manhandled the shadow of the former Herald into a chair, briefly releasing his cuffs to fix his hands to the table. As he was settled, like a child who really didn’t want to sit up to eat dinner, his gaze ravaged her. Olive felt like he was pulling strips of her flesh off as he tried to assess just who she was, and what she wanted with him.

God, Olive felt right at home under that gaze.

“We’ll be right outside. Warden says twenty minutes. Not like _ he’s _ got places to be. But I’m sure _ you _do.” The guard who’d first addressed her affirmed, just a touch of threat slicked unwaveringly over the pleasantries. He was probably not much older than Olive, but looked like a relic of the Stanford Prison Experiment, with a lopsided 70s style pornstache on his upper lip. It made her want to vomit. A relic simultaneously of wantonness and pride, she mused, longing to throw herself at him and rip it off, even if she had to take the skin beneath it too.

She swallowed the bile in the back of her throat.

“I’ll make every minute count.” She smiled, not taking her eyes away from the prisoner, who clearly already knew that something about her visit wasn’t quite normal.

“Give us a holler if he gets out of line, ma’am. We’ll come put him back into it.”

The second guard, an older, larger man, who Olive noticed smelt badly of perspiration, and had large sweat patches dampening the pits of his shirt, leant over to stare John Seed directly in the face. The prisoner didn’t bother returning the stare, choosing to keep his attention on Olive. _ Unaffected by correctional officer intimidation _ , Olive scrawled on imaginary spiral bound notation paper. Well, three sets of shit parents would probably mean you weren’t scared of _ anything. _

“_ Behave _ , Seed. You got a _ lady _ present. Closest you gonna get… well, _ ever, _ at this point. There’ll be no jackin’ off later either, or _ you’re _ cleanin’ it up with your _toothbrush _ . Filthy little _ runt. _ Mommy shoulda _ let _ you die. Lotta people woulda been spared lotta pain. Ain’t that right, Miss Kestler?”

Clearly TV had lied about the good cop, bad cop routine.

And clearly constitutional rights were right off the table at this point.

The metal door mechanisms clanked loudly as Stanford and Sweat retreated and locked them in, joking within earshot:

“Wonder if Jesus’ll get him outta _ this _ one?”

Nasty laughter.

And then, they were alone.

In the silence.

She couldn’t believe she was really here, that her forgery had fooled the most secure facility in the country, that it had been so easy to bluff her way in. That _ he _ was sat an arm’s reach away. She could _ touch _him if she wanted to. 

But, now the time was upon her, she didn’t even really know where to begin.

She sat breathing the same stale air as _ John Seed. _She didn’t want to waste that honour on clumsy, thoughtless words.

“Mr Seed…” Her voice fractured just a little on the long ‘e’.

_ Get a grip Olive. _

Shoulders back, throat cleared.

Take two.

“Mr Seed, my name is Olive Kestler. I'm a psychology major at Berkeley. Criminal psychology, if we're going to insist on specificity. And I generally do.”

His lips were firmly stitched together, not insisting on anything.

She pulled out her notes, and gestured to already printed sheets of a manuscript, corporate typeface neatly aligned and double spaced.

“I’m writing my thesis on the correlation between criminal activity and religious fanaticism. Again, _ specifically _ , not that of major organised religions, I’ve read a million papers on radical Islam and the Irish troubles and the like, and they’re all stale as a decade old communion wafer. Forgive me, I know you deplore the term, but my interest is that of independent sects. _ Cults _.”

She relaxed, knowing that any judgement he was going to pass on her was already made.

“_ Specifically… _ yours.”

There's something about the moment you meet someone famous, or _ infamous _ in this case, where you suddenly realise that you know every irrelevant detail about _ their _ lives, but to them, you are simply a speck of dust in a wider universe full of far more pressing matters and people they'd push you into the line of fire for. You are a bacteria squirming on this earth organism that will soon shrivel and die, with no consequence to them whatsoever.

Olive didn't quite know how she'd wanted him to react to her. Adoration? Recognition? A tribute to the lengths she had taken to sit in front of him?

Anything but the disinterested snarl he was throwing her way.

New tactic.

Cut the bullshit.

“I have something for you. He wanted you to have it.”

Swallowing down her wounded ego, she reached into her purse, as she had earlier, and set the small silver box on the table. Precisely central to them, caught between their bodies which were resisting like magnets aligned to the same pole.

He turned his gaze to it.

Curious.

Finally seeing something _ new _, after so long.

And yet… he sat there.

Barely even flinched.

Silent as his forthcoming grave.

Olive twitched with the knowledge that her limited time was running out. Would he just _ sit _ there? She couldn't help but be _ disappointed. _Where was the wordsmith, the rising star of the Atlanta courtrooms, the silver-tongued slayer of sin that she’d been promised? She glanced at her watch, seeing the sliver of steel tick slowly in an endless loop. Thirty seconds, forty five seconds, sixty...

“Which one is it?”

A hot flush of excitement surged through her, her heart fluttering as she turned back to meet his eye again. He had an odd look on his face… calm, resigned, yet there was an edge of inevitability, of _ dread _, illuminated in the black of his pupils.

“Which one did they put to the _ slaughter _first?”

His voice, once clipped, with a sheen of arrogance and superiority, now sounded strained and reluctant. Like he’d been strangled.

Olive saw that getting straight to the point was working on him. Besides, if she was to see the _ wrath _ lurking within the tamed beast, and in twenty… no, _ sixteen _ minutes, she'd have to… _ push. _

“Jacob.”

“...When?”

“Yesterday. Official TOD was reported as 1:16am.”

“And did he suffer?”

“As much as anyone does, I assume. I’m only a grad student, and he was a case study. I wasn’t invited to the party.”

John closed his eyes and snorted air softly, smiling a little.

“_ But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found. _ ” He recited before… _ laughing _.

If his hands weren’t handcuffed to the table, he’d have probably been wiping his eyes, holding his sides so as to not let them split.

“Call me old fashioned, but I never found Luke 15:32 funny.” Olive teased. She hadn’t expected this in a million years, and it _ excited _her.

His laughter ran its initial course, and he settled again. His eyes were glassy with a film of tears, not quite teetering over the edge onto his cheeks. Just stagnating in the corners. And he picked at his fingernails... well, what was left of them.

“The psychiatrist here- patronising _ bitch- _ tells me I have ‘separation anxiety’. That I’m _ ‘emotionally dependent’. _ ” His irreverent smile grew wider, “For five fucking years, I’ve cycled through every possible facility in my head, knowing they were _ somewhere _ in that list. Is it wrong? Am I _ sick _ , like they’ve always said I am? That in this moment, I feel only _ relief _ ?” He laughed out loud again, “Because I know where he is. At last. I know where my brother is. And somehow that makes him more alive. Even though he’s _ not _.”

“He is… he _ was _ in California. Atwater-”

“No he’s not. He’s in _ Hell. _”

Even now, he clung to his faith. No wonder the guards were mocking him. A pious man, of veracious words and unprejudiced resolve, held captive by a system run for profit, fuelled by deceit and systemic bias.

_ He is a saint, _Olive marvelled.

“Not if he asked forgiveness for his sins.”

“_ Jacob _ ? Asking _ forgiveness _ ? He was a paragon of righteousness.” John snorted, “But he’s in _ Hell _, where we all belong. And we’ll be together soon. All of us.”

Olive didn’t know if he was counting Rachel Jessop in that. He’d always openly hated her, even when he stood defending her in court. There was no way he could have realised, but she was still playing the sympathy card, after all these years. A judge had finally taken pity on her, mostly on account of her age, and commuted her sentence to life without parole. To be seen out in a psychiatric facility in Washington DC.

“You sound so sure of your damnation...” She urged, hoping he’d explain.

“We failed _ God _ . Where else are we going to fucking go?” He spat. Olive could see his confidence rising, and imagined that he’d not been addressed like this, like an equal, allowed to speak his mind, for so long. He was _ relishing _ in it.

She wanted to connect with him. Show him that she understood his mind, his faith. She could share in it with him. Her words became parrotted, paraphrased from Joseph’s writings. But she knew he’d recognise them, and maybe see a friend in her.

“I don’t call martyrdom failure, John. Zechariah, Stephen, Antipas… even your own namesake had his head put on a plate for the daughter of Herod. Your name will be listed among them, as will your brothers.” 

He didn’t respond, taking her all in, mulling over her assurances.

So she continued.

“You showed the world a mirror, let them all see how _ evil _ it has become. That we are overrun with locusts and snakes, and they must be cast out. Purged from God’s earth. And to do that, to reach the Garden, sometimes sacrifices have to be made.” 

Something flickered in his face.

Something changed.

Darkened.

“I see you pay great heed to my brother’s teachings.”

He leaned forward in his chair and she could see the veins straining in his forehead.

“Miss _ Kestler _, right?” He already knew that was her name, but he needed the upper hand. The scales he’d once had inscribed, etched, printed, tattooed on anything he could get his hands on, were still tipping in Olive’s favour. He was chained, emaciated, a number now, not a man. She was willing to play along. She was not his better. Quite the opposite, in fact. This man’s name had fallen from the lips of God.

Olive was but a servant to a servant.

“That’s correct.” She lowered her voice and moved herself forward, putting her face closer to his, “But you can call me Olive.”

“An intriguing proposition. I doubt I’m the first to hear it. Any more buttons open on your blouse, and I’d have to question your propriety.” He was _ chiding _her. “Is that what you’d like? Are you a fallen woman, a lustful sinner, come to atone? Or are you the Whore of Babylon? Come to drink the blood of saints? To revel in martyrdom? All that scarlet hair…”

He lounged back, and took a moment before smirking… no, _ sneering _at her.

“Was that _ evangelical _enough for you? Shall I take a bow?”

She cursed inside. She hadn’t counted on such hostility, hadn’t realised he might think she was _ mocking _him. She thought he’d be overjoyed to see a friendly face, a devoted ear.

“What the _ fuck _ do you _ really _ want?” He hissed, spit spraying like venom from a coiled viper. “Am I an _ amusement _ to you?”

She went to defend herself, explain herself, but he cut through her hesitation. He didn’t blink once as he rampaged at her in hushed snarls:

“Spare me the bullshit. Just one look and I see who you are. With your _ thesis _ , and your _ regurgitated preaching. _ You’re an _ attention seeker, _ the type to stick another kid’s fingers into the fire because you want to see how much they scream. A cuckoo, climbing into a nest that doesn’t belong to you, and never will. Taking pain that isn’t yours and making it your own. You just want a part of it, any of it. Because _ you _ don’t have anything else. You’re empty. And you want a piece of _ me _.”

He softened as quickly as he had angered, and smiled at her again. It was oddly genuine, like ripping her to shreds was catharsis for him.

“Am I wrong?”

Olive barely blanched at his anger. _ This _ is what she was here to see, and oh the pages she could already put to paper. She couldn’t wait to listen back to the recording. Fall asleep to the sound of it. Pretend she was at _ home _, listening to the pastor.

“No.”

He seemed satisfied, gorging himself on her truth.

“It does take one to know one, my dear.”

He glanced at her papers, at the box, taking it all in again.

“So what _ can _I do for you, Olive Kestler, Whore of Babylon?”

“First, I want you to tell me how you saw through me.”

“Not an ounce of condolence when you said my brother’s name. Not even an _ attempt _ . You travelled from California, you brought _ this... _ ” He pointed at the box, “... which you say Jacob _ entrusted _ you with. He clearly cares for you then. Yet still, not a whisper of sorrow in your voice. And you lied to the Warden. No one would _ ever _ get in here like this without a court order, which you no doubt forged because _ you’d _ never get it. How you made her believe that a judge would allow contact between me and my family, through _ you, _ is a _ mystery _.”

He shook his head at her.

“All that effort for someone you are clearly barely mourning, despite his apparent death being _ such _ a _ raw _wound.”

Olive could see why he’d won so many court cases back in his day.

A quick flick of her gaze to her watch

Quarter to eleven.

Ten minutes left.

“So have you come for my blood? My tears, perhaps? Thinking I’d weep at your bullshit revelations, that you could throw my family’s suffering in my face and I’d confess my undying gratitude to you?”

He wanted a confession? He’d get one. She took a deep breath before she began. And she couldn’t stop a manic, ditzy smile from splitting her professional face open. She resisted every urge to start with ‘_ I’m your number one fan’ _, remembering that the Annie Wilkes line of interrogation didn’t exactly end well for the devoted admirer. 

“The truth?”

He waited expectantly, slightly tapping the table as the seconds ticked by.

“The truth is… I’m going to write the best damn thesis anyone’s _ ever _written.”

She didn’t even try to hide the excitement in her voice.

“I find you _ fascinating _ , John. I’ve been following your case from its outset. I was in the observation gallery during the trial. I watched you work. Read and re-read the court records, mimicked your cadance, trying to get inside your head. I've wanted to meet you from the moment you gave that opening statement. I think I've dreamed about it every night since. Your way with words. Your confidence. Your _ tenacity _.”

He raised an intrigued eyebrow.

Even after all this time, Olive thought, his ego likes to be stroked.

“You seem to have a way with words yourself, _ Olive. _As is the way of a temptress.”

She giggled.

“I assure you, John, the only thing I’m seducing out of you, today at least, is a quote. Or two, if you’re feeling particularly _ energetic _.” She subtly pulled the dictaphone from her purse so the edge, with a crimson record icon visibly protruding, peeked over the rim. Then she let it slip from her fingers and it landed back amongst her crap, coagulating lip glosses and old receipts and shoplifted Three Musketeers bars with a soft thud.

He looked undeniably impressed.

“So this is strictly business? You broke federal law for a fucking _ quote? _”

“First hand sources, primary research, gets me extra cred with whichever idiot has to stick a grade on it and pretend they cared. A direct statement from someone about the consequences and psychological impact of their case is like _ gold dust. _ And so, here I am.” She shrugged impishly to emphasise her point. She almost winked, but decided she still needed to at least _ pretend _ she was playing it cool.

John waved his hands at her, the shackles clanging against the table like an under practised marching band, and gave a slight indication towards the ever looming cameras.

“Well, I _ would _shake your hand to congratulate you on your innovative methodologies. But I’m somewhat of a leper around here, and it seems they don’t want the infection spreading.”

“I’d settle for a smile.”

He obliged, grinning at her with those still perfect teeth. His eyes were lit up, and Olive imagined that he’d not looked this vivacious in a long time.

“So what does Jacob make of your little scheme? Is this payback for the time I broke the sound system at the Veteran’s Center so it wouldn’t stop playing Cher’s ‘Believe’?”

_ Shit. _

_ You gave him fucking false hope, Olive, _ she scolded, her mood sinking momentarily, before realising that she may yet get the explosive reaction she’d been hoping for if he had to endure the bereavement _ all over again _.

“Jacob is _ really _dead, John.”

The silence was _ excruciating. _

And _ invigorating. _

_ There it was. _ All over his face. With eight minutes left to go. The heartbreak, the _ devastation, _as it finally hit home for him that Jacob Seed was nothing more than a rotting sack of meat lying on a concrete slab waiting to be incinerated.

“I wouldn’t be so heartless in my pursuit for knowledge as to make that up.” She pressed on, “You needed to know. I needed an excuse to be here. And I just thought if you were emotionally vulnerable, you’d be more open to talking. That’s the way _ you _always did it.”

There.

Matter of fact.

No bullshit.

“I see.” John whispered.

He was still. Unnervingly so.

“I had a feeling you’d learned from the best. You’ve taken on my brother’s words, it makes sense you’d also take mine.” He gazed across Olive’s collarbones, tracing them with irises the colour of their namesake flower. Planting a little garden along it with increasingly dewey eyes. Poised on the edge of breaking. His tongue swept across his teeth under his tensed lips, as if he was holding back every instinct to rip her throat out like one of his brother’s wolves. 

“What are you thinking?” Olive murmured.

“I’m thinking about how much I would _ love _ to write _ LUST _right there. Just above your breasts.” 

“Isn’t that a little forward for someone you just met?” She baited, liking where this was going.

“I’d show you what true manipulation can be. I’d let you feel the pleasure of my needle. Put you on the edge but never let you have it. See what it would do to you. How far you’d _ truly _go to get what you want.”

“Tempting...”

“_ Yes, it is… _”

“... but I’ll have to raincheck. Maybe we can organise a conjugal visit the night before they put you down? One last night of passion? Jacob seemed to enjoy it.” Olive played it cold.

A soft ‘hm’ escaped him, before he threw himself forward as far as the cuffs would let him go. Olive could smell disinfectant on him, and nasty cheap soap. See the whites of his eyes, bloodshot, deranged. And those tears, still clinging on, refusing to fall.

Aubree hadn’t been kidding when she’d said he’d finally lost it.

“You’re a poisonous little harlot, aren’t you?” God, there was so much going on at once in that open book of a face. Utter despair and hopelessness. A numbness. A recognition of his own impending fate. The _ hatred _ in his voice, yet it was _ dripping _with desire. How could one person be experiencing so much in this moment, and not be physically torn apart, limbs ripped in all directions by the gravity of each polarizing sensation?

Olive didn’t need to look under the table to see that even through the agonising grief, her machinations, long lost from his pitiful, isolated existence, were anything less than _ arousing _for him.

Maybe he’d be scrubbing his cell with his toothbrush later after all.

“Your words, not mine.”

“You prey on the lonely, _ feed _on the misery of others-”

“Who doesn’t?”

“How does it _ taste _?”

“Right now, a little like I’m getting what I want, which is the sweetest taste of all.”

“I satisfy you then?”

“Oh, fuck yeah.”

He bit his lip, barely battling against the strain in his pants.

“There was a time when I would have had my way with you-”

“And I’d have charged a fortune, Babylonian hookers are a rare breed these days-”

“- taken you right here, on this table, and even though I can see you’re a woman who doesn’t beg for _ anything, _ I’d make you beg for _ me _.”

“With or without cuffs?”

He smiled menacingly at her again.

“I can see why Jacob liked you.”

Six minutes left. Business to attend to.

“Much as I’d like to flirt a little more, John, I’m on a tight schedule.” She dragged them both from their haze, “Why don’t you take a look to see how much Jacob loved _ you?” _

She thought it time to finally open the casket. One last nudge and she’d have the world’s fucking finest interview and bragging rights to go with it. She pushed it towards him, letting it scrape against the metal table. He reluctantly took the hint, adjusted himself to try to ease his swollen erection and forcefully removed the lid, as though even if he were expecting his brother’s mummified heart or shrunken head to be awaiting him, it couldn’t be any worse than everything he’d already endured.

A slightly musty smell.

The stench of death, but a death long past, still tinged with gunpowder and a tang of metal where the creature had been skinned. There were flecks of dried blood from some forgotten victim. The chain was tarnished, from years of wear.

“He hoped it would bring you luck.”

At the sight of the little rabbit’s foot, the breath hitched in John’s throat. His hands began to shake and he reached in to feel the soft fur beneath his fingertips.

“It’s an ugly thing. I’ve always hated it.” He choked.

And Olive watched with triumphant glee as a single tear finally began to unwillingly slip down his face, gliding down over his jutting cheekbones to drip onto his orange jumpsuit.

“He never told me where he got it.”

“Joseph. When they were little kids, long before I was born. Joseph saw it at the thrift store and stole it for him as a birthday present. He didn’t know what it was. He just saw something furry and Jake loved animals. And Jake kept it, for all those years. Took it to war with him. He was wearing it when we found him at the shelter. In fact, the last thing I heard Joseph say to him was ‘Keep it close. Maybe it will bring us together again someday’.”

He recoiled from the charm, like it had burned him. Like it was hallowed ground and he was a devil incarnate, unable to walk upon it without bursting into flame.

“Do you know what the last thing Joseph said to _ me _ was?”

Not for the first time, Olive imagined them sat side by side in the courthouse holding cell, waiting to be transferred to jail. Knowing they had a matter of hours, minutes, before they were separated forever, only to be reunited by returning their bodies to the earth.

“No.”

She could see John no longer held himself back, now knowing he had nothing else to lose. Knowing that he would never get a chance to say these things out loud again. Knowing he was the puppet, dangling on strings she’d knotted around him. _ And after all, who better to tell your secrets to than a pretty whore you’ll never see again? _

He spat at her with self-loathing and bitter, bitter regret.

“He said... ‘Why didn’t you just _ confess, _John?’.

He pulled at the cuffs, frustrated that he couldn’t gesticulate, display with his expressive, svelte hands the gut-wrenching torment he felt at having disappointed his brother.

_ “Why didn’t you just confess?” _ He repeated, ire raging in his eyes, “You want to know _ WHY _?”

Olive simply nodded.

More tears, freely shed.

“I was _ afraid. _ So I fought it. I fought for _ them _ . And I _ embarrassed _ them. Because I lied. To the world, I seemed ashamed at what we had built, all that we had done. Scared of what they would think of us, of what they would do to us. I didn’t _ own _ my triumphs, or my failings, or my sins. I wasn’t a martyr, I chose to play the denying apostle instead. I pledged in the sight of God that I knew _ nothing _ of what we stood accused of, when it was for God that I committed those acts in the first place. I was a liar. And liar, and a _ coward.” _

Olive knew then that she’d replay this recording back for the rest of her life.

“There, slut. You’ve got your fucking quote. Are you drunk on my wounds yet?”

No, she wasn’t nearly satisfied enough, she wanted _ more, _gluttony ravaging her agenda. But she could hear movement outside the door. Stanford and Sweat had clearly heard the raised voices and were considering interrupting. She lowered her voice, to imply that he should do the same.

“Why _ were _you afraid, John? Death is hardly the worst thing imaginable.”

“I think you already know.”

She did, but she wanted to hear him say it. And he knew that. Letting the words slip out, finally releasing them into the universe after so long rattling around inside his head... Olive could see relief bleeding into the flush of his face as he admitted it.

“I knew the moment Deputy Rook slapped those cuffs on me that we would be separated if they had their way. That’s the way it always was. Social workers. Psychologists. Cops. Even my parents wouldn’t take Joseph in. Only me. We’re _ weaker _ when we’re apart, see? Easier to prey on.”

His hands screwed into tight fists.

“...I didn’t want to be _ alone _ . I _ couldn’t _be alone. Not again.”

Olive knew exactly what that felt like. And this wasn’t exactly news to her. The hallucinations made sense now. The perpetual presence of his long dead parents. He’d filled the empty spaces in his life with familiar voices, destructive voices, from whom he had only known condemnation, because that’s what he felt he _ deserved _ . The law sought to make him pay, but no one demanded more recompense for his behaviour than _ him _.

Four minutes left.

“And the worst of it, Olive Kestler?”

That smile was back.

A mask, clinging to his face and slipping fast.

“I took everything we were working to cast aside, the bodies we’d stepped over to be here and I _ flaunted _ it. The arson, the days Jacob spent dying in that desert, the flesh stripped corpse of his comrade, the mangled body of Joseph’s wife, his lifeless daughter in the ICU, my _ own _body, every exorcism I endured, every lash that I felt, even Rachel’s deadbeat parents and the sweet, sweet high of cocaine we both knew…”

He could barely get the words out. 

“...and I told the world that we were _ monsters _because of it.”

_ Monsters _. That was what had been splashed across every newspaper. The epithet on everyone’s lips. Delivered in the President’s remarks. Hurled across the table on The View. Peppered into gun control remarks by late night talk show hosts.

John was trembling with rage.

“We’re _ not _ the monsters they say we are _ . _ We’re the _ victims _ here. Even though we tried so hard _ not _ to be. It’s the world that deserves to be punished! Not me! Not my brothers! All they ever did was try to _ protect _ me! And look how I repaid them. Jacob’s _ dead. _ Because _ I failed. _”

He was swallowing down sobs, and Olive just saw a little boy, taken from his home and put into the arms of strangers who didn’t even try to love him.

It was satisfying to watch… and yet suddenly she saw herself. Back in front of that cop. Telling him that her mother had saved her from a godly life she hadn’t wanted. Only, she had wanted nothing more than to just be _ home. _

Something in this moment, strangely, moved her.

“The GBMI plea was a smart move, get sectioned rather than be executed.” She placed her hand on his, sharing his warmth, “Even if they’d keep you doped up for the rest of time, it would have been better than this. Anyone would have done it.”

“Don’t you get it?” He sobbed, “We’re not just _ anyone. _ We’re God’s chosen. And they’re my _ family _ . I should have done _ more _.”

He quieted, exhausted.

“I’m just so fucking tired.”

His head dropped down onto his chest, eyes gently closed and he whispered:

“I just want it all to be _ over _.”

The interview was almost definitely over. Olive had got everything she’d come for. Sorrow, devotion, anger, wit, vulgarity- the whole spectrum of John Seed.

But seeing him like this… 

An idea now took hold in her head. 

It certainly wasn’t what she’d had planned for the day, but it sounded quite _ amusing, _ something that would most certainly get her name inked into the pages of the New Testament of Joseph’s Word, which she had no doubt he or one of his faithful was penning. And what did she really have to lose? A deadline for a thesis no one would ever give a shit about? A beaten old car, and a closet sized apartment and a sugar addiction? An estranged mother and a couple of fuckbuddies whose names she barely remembered?

Who wouldn’t cast away such trivialities for a chance at _ eternal reverence _?

Now was her moment.

Now, she would finally have her deliverance.

“What if it _ could _be over?”

He raised his head and gave her a cynical glare.

“Is there shot of potassium chloride in that box of yours too? Pentobarbitals in your bra?”

“Not quite…”

The time was ebbing away from her. A matter of minutes left, two at the most, less now that she was counting. Voices in the corridor outside. Aubree’s tapping stilettos getting closer and closer. Or maybe Olive was just imagining it? She couldn’t quite tell. But every second counted.

And maybe, just maybe, she could make her mark.

She whispered as fast as her tongue would allow.

“I was born into a family like yours. Religiously inclined, shall we say? They were my _ whole world _ . I was so pure. Blessed. A child of God. But my mother couldn't see that. She lost her faith, became afeared of our leaders and practises. And a night came where she woke me, stole me from my bed, told me to dress in all the clothes I owned… and we _ ran _.”

He was demonstrably confused, and the lights were flickering, and a gate buzzed somewhere in the distance, Stanford and Sweat’s joints clicking as they limbered up to drag him back to his cell, and if only she had more _ time _...

“I’ve spent years believing that running doesn’t achieve anything, that she was giving it all up for _ nothing. _ But maybe...” 

Olive glanced towards the cameras, then the doors, rapidly noting down a step by step procedure of just how they could pull this off.

_ And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. _

_ Oh, fuck it. _

“Run away with me.”

The blood rushed dizzyingly through her veins and their hearts beat in tandem, a spark of unbridled adrenalin igniting the room with possibility as he realised what she meant. She’d seen enough prison break movies to carry this off, to at least get them outside. And if they were gunned down in the process, so be it.

“Run away with me, John. Take it all back, your life, your _ fate _ . Just like my mom did. Because in the end, who _ gives _a fuck anymore? What do we have to lose?” 

She gripped his hands.

“Show them you’re _ not _ afraid in one last blaze of fucking _ glory _.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh dear Olive, what have you started? And poor old Jacob... rest in peace. You're probably literally much happier now than you ever were alive.
> 
> Just one more chapter to go, and we'll see how that prison break goes for them! 
> 
> As usual, you can follow me on Tumblr at unclefungusthegoat! And if you're reading my main fic 'Icarus and Styx'... I have barely started chapter 9, so it'll be a little while hahahaha
> 
> Take care,  
Chloe x


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *blows dust off of fanfic* *coughing fit* Bonjour mes amis, I'm back in France working once again and therefore have been completely and utterly useless at getting anything updated. YAY! But here it is, at last! Extra long as well, like EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA long, roughly 9000 words!
> 
> I hope it fulfils any and all expectations, it was really difficult to write!
> 
> I'd just like to thank everyone for being so wonderfully supportive of this little fic and of my mischevious garbage goblin, Olive! This has been such a passion project and I have really enjoyed putting it together (even if it has taken me 10 months for three freaking chapters hahahaha)
> 
> Icarus and Styx is continuing of course (slowly as with everything else hahahaha)... and I also have another short AU up my sleeve for the new year at some point!
> 
> Anyway, let's see what happens! And disclaimer: don't EVER try and break out of a supermax prison. It just... won't happen for you. I've taken SEVERAL extensive liberties here hahahaha

**LOS ANGELES TIMES, JULY 19TH 2023**

Convicted terrorist and former Project at Eden’s Gate ‘Herald’, Jacob Seed, was executed by lethal injection early this morning by the State of California.

Last night, as per convention, Seed was offered a final meal and last rites, both of which he declined. He was led to the execution chamber at approximately 00:50am, where, having been strapped to the gurney, he delivered the following statement to awaiting witnesses:

“Oldest goes first. It’s only right. That’s the way of things. That’s the job of an older brother. To take the lash so maybe they don’t have to. I’m not going to apologise for protecting my family. Never have before, and I’m not about to start now. We keep each other strong. Keep each other alive, even when we're apart. I don’t believe in their God, but I know my death will fortify them. Let them believe they won’t be alone on the other side when the time comes. Maybe it’ll give them hope. And maybe now, I can finally get some goddamn sleep.”

The procedure was carried out by veteran executioner, Howard Bell. Seed was pronounced dead by presiding doctors at 1:16am and his body removed for autopsy and cremation.

Despite the late hour of the execution, human rights and mental health activists protested outside the gates of the United States Penitentiary, in Atwater, in an attempt to attain a stay of execution and commuted sentence for the condemned. The Hope County Massacres case has come under great scrutiny from psychologists, who are polarized about the culpability of the Seed family due to severe mental health issues.

Jacob Seed was a sniper in the 82nd Airborne Infantry Division- famously named the ‘All Americans’ - and was discharged from the Army in 2008 with post traumatic stress disorder. The record attributes this to a period in which Seed was separated from his unit in the Iraqi desert, and forced to cannibalise his comrade, Private Jesse T. Miller in order to survive.

Prior to serving in the military, Seed had been incarcerated in a private juvenile detention facility, after the assault of his foster parents, and the arson of their home and farmland. In a statement taken at the time, Seed claimed that he and his brothers had been ‘starved, beaten and worked like dogs’ in their care. They had already been rehomed once due to abuse and neglect.

His younger brothers were also convicted of domestic terrorism in relation to the Hope County Massacres.

Joseph Seed was the leader of the Project at Eden’s Gate, and is currently on death row in Indiana State Prison. John Seed is being held at supermax facility ADX Florence in Colorado, having been transferred after an assault on a correctional officer. He is scheduled for execution by lethal injection on October 2nd, at 7:15am.

Lethal injection has been the execution method of choice since 1977. Intravenous cannulas inserted into the prisoner’s arms allow for a sequential ‘cocktail’ to be administered. The official procedure consists of a fast-acting sedative (pentobarbital), a muscle relaxant (pancuronium bromide) to cease breathing functions, and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest.

* * *

It was crazy. Irrational. _ Suicidal. _If she ever managed to write up that thesis (and those odds were rapidly dwindling), she’d describe their bid for freedom from ADX Florence as ‘a masterpiece doodled by the hand of delusion, coloured with grandeur and nihilism and all shades of pessimistic and optimistic. Beautiful. Entrancing. Limitless.’ The kind of purple prose bullshit that professors ate up when you were threatening to expose their affairs with the busty blonde sorority freak who sat in the front row.

And when came the time to formulate such an artistic expression of her experiences here, she would also write of it: ‘not since the gates to Constantinople were left open has there been such an indescribably beautiful fuckup.’

Because this endeavour also happened to be, without a doubt, _ doomed _to fail.

But Olive Kestler was never one to cower away from a precipice. 

_ One last blaze of glory. _ A freefall from the edge of the cliff. Chalky air and blinding cold. Wind whipping through fabric. Body breaking on the rocks. Everything just slipping, tumbling, fading away with a lightning quick sting of adrenaline and regret. Oh, Olive was so ready to feel it. To see what inspiration captured her in those final moments, ideas that would be lost to time. So ready to find out just what her mother had felt all those years ago, as she stumbled towards the fence, crosshairs settling on the back of her skull.

From the sudden spark of life in John’s dead eyes, she knew he was ready for it too.

To go out _ fighting_, rather than _ whimpering. _

To not give them the satisfaction of watching him squirm and suffocate on a table. Fluorescent lights behind mirrored glass, like a curiosity in some eccentric macabre menagerie.

Her hands were still embracing his.

Their time was up.

But Olive had more to say.

“Run away with me! After all the shit this world has put you through, what else is there to be afraid _ of _ ? You have always stood and faced the judgement of people who thought they knew better than you_. _ Who is there left? _ God _ ? Why would _ he _ judge you in the same light as these non-believers? What judgement awaits you beyond the grave but reward and paradise and peace? Gifts from the one who _ chose _ you?”

The words came slithering from her tongue. Revelations she had not even considered until the moment arrived. Like the serpent on the Tree of Knowledge.

“Who chose _ me, _ to guide you there?”

John was enchanted by her. She could tell. They always were, men and women alike, when her charms and wiles spilled out of her, along with her breasts from her blouse. Oh, he was so close to eating that apple, but he would feel no shame at his nakedness, only an urge to ravage her and learn just how beautiful sin could be.

“I always knew I was special. And now I know _ why _.”

His lip quivered in a deranged half smile. 

“You want to teach me how to fly again? Through ecstasy? Into forever?” 

Death had never sounded so _ enticing _. 

“We don’t even need wings.” She whispered.

The swipe of a keycard in the door. Olive braced herself for the oncoming stench of unwashed, overworked correctional officer. Her heartbeat clattered against her ribs. She thought back to the tobacco chewing guard at the gate, imagined him floundering at his controls as her car went speeding towards the highway. As the slap of orange jumpsuit hit him around the face, racing by, visible only through the car window, when it was far too late for him to do anything about it.

That was, if they made it that far.

_ Hey, think big. _

The door swung open with an impatient crash. Stanford and Sweat came lolloping into the room, congealed hair gel catching the light with every waddling step. Thrusting their hips forward, attempting to display not just their sidearms and cuffs, but _ all _their equipment. Olive couldn’t wait to see their faces when they realised just what was about to go down.

“Alrigh’ Seed. That’s twenty. Kumbaya is over.” Sweat moved to release John from where he was chained to the table. He noticed the silver box between them. “An’ lookee here, little Miss got ya’ a present. Ain’t that sweet? You sure as shit better a’ paid her y’ gratitude.”

John held Olive’s gaze, poised, stilled. The tears that had settled on his cheeks had evaporated. Every inch of self pity, of guilt, of despair over his brother's state sanctioned death was suddenly _ gone. _Every trace of fear, of anticipation for his hopeless future, forgotten. The metal table was steaming up under the heat of his fingertips, and they twitched with forethought. 

Every moment of bloodshed to come playing out in his head.

Articulated in those icy eyes, crystallized with a sharp, searing energy. 

White hot. 

Piercingly cold.

_ How tantalizing, to get frostbite in the arid Colorado desert. _

“Hoping he wasn’t too much trouble, Miss Kestler?” Stanford had clearly primped his facial hair out in the corridor. It looked even less flattering than before, slightly lopsided. Thinning on the side he favoured stroking.

Olive smiled at the officers, moving her tutti-frutti chewing gum around between her molars. It sounded sticky, was tangy on her tastebuds. She could feel the sugar seeping into her bloodstream, fizzing like she had injected sherbet as a low grade heroin replacement. It was a welcome distraction from the gag reflex that once again lurched at the sight of the greasy moustache.

“Not at all.” 

“He didn’t do nothin’ t’ tarnish ol’ Florence’s good name? She’s an ol’ girl, and we fin’ the young folk in her care don’t of’n respect their elders,” Sweat was standing over John, readying himself for the standard prisoner movement procedure. It was now or never. Every automated door they took John through on his way back to the cells decreased the window of opportunity. Olive had a suspicion that only the administration building doors were powered by the officer’s keycards. If he got any further, back into the centrally controlled main prison unit, he’d be out of reach, and doomed to the gurney.

“He was a perfect gentleman.” She purred, “Seems a shame to lose such fine manners to some civil servant jerking off over who gets to play God.”

They chuckled, unsure of whether she was joking or not.

“Swanky accent ain’t a sure fire sign a’ gentlemanly conduct, darlin’.”

Stanford nodded in agreement.

The gum squeaked between Olive’s teeth as she chewed loudly. Smacking her lips together. Grinding it down, squashing it flat, before rolling it over again into a sphere.

She preferred _ anticipatory quirk _ rather than _ nervous tick. _

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

She wasn’t even _ nervous_. Why the fuck would she be?

Sweat’s fat fingers clicked the key into the cuff mechanism. Each degree of turn was excruciatingly elongated, like the descending blade in Poe’s _ ‘Pit and the Pendulum’, _ fate edging closer with every minute movement. A bead of sweat dripped from his forehead onto Stanford’s wrist. He winced in muted disgust and pulled away, stepping back to let his colleague handle the usually subdued prisoner.

“Remember wha’ I said, Seed? ‘Bout the toothbrush?”

John’s left hand was free from the table, and the cuff replaced on his wrist. Olive stared, mesmerized by something that hadn’t even happened yet.

“We gonna be seeing you again, Miss Kestler?” Stanford had caught his reflection in the metallic table and was preening again, “On the big day? Gonna be quite a party, I think.”

_ I’ll bring balloons. _

“Sure. Maybe I’ll bake some banana bread. Old family recipe. There’s a buffet, yeah?”

No one laughed except Olive.

Although the corners of John’s mouth twitched so discreetly, it could almost have been imagined. The soggy lump of a CO moved onto his right hand, wiping away the droplet on the end of his nose as he went.

“Ah, Warden said you was one a’ those _ humanatherians, _ not inta the whole eye for ‘n eye type thin'?”

_ Why was he fumbling with the lock? _

Every second, _ endless_.

“You could say that. It makes the whole world blind, doesn't it? I find that counterproductive.” God, she was willing _ herself _ to shut up for once, only to savour the silence before the hungry beasts of pandemonium came to feast.

The right hand cuff was away from the table.

Sweat began to twist John's arm behind him, seeking to restrain...

“Well, Seed, say y’goodbyes. An’ Miss, you jus’ wait right here, an’ someone’ll come get ya-”

Without hesitation, the Eden’s Gate Baptist, nimble and sly, leapt to his feet.

He pirouetted behind the CO in a single swoop.

A flash of colour.

Barely a footstep heard.

His exposed forearms locked around Sweat’s bulging, ruched neck, tucked under his sagging jowls, and within seconds, he jarred it to the right with such force that the correctional officer’s vertebrae cracked and shattered instantaneously. His mouth gaped open, sentence left hanging, unfinished forever. Eyeballs rolled back into their sockets, and he crumpled at John’s feet, still very damp and now very dead. Olive had never seen a corpse before, and rather revelled in her virginity having been taken by this illustrated Adonis, swathed in orange like a monarch butterfly.

She watched the bloodlust drop into his chest.

Saw his focus shift ravenously to the man beside him.

Stanford saw it too.

“Oh _ shit- _”

He reached for his Glock, but he’d long been complacent in his state of the art, fortified palace, and his panicked, out-of-practise hands were trembling. As though he were possessed by one of the Princes of Hell, the rogue inmate lunged for the young man and pushed him headfirst into the nearest wall. Though still the frail creature who had graced Olive with his presence but twenty minutes ago, the prisoner’s strength seemed Herculean, driven by the most base of instincts.

_ Freedom. _

“Fu-ck-no-n-no-” Stanford begged, the loose cuff around John’s wrist swinging gently into his thorax. Such tenderness for a sliver of metal fixed to a hand, etched with sins of the soul, that was crushing his windpipe.

His sidearm clattered to the floor and John’s still shackled, sandaled foot kicked it away.

He leaned in to meet his prey face to face.

“Do you know _ Proverbs 20:22, _Officer?”

Olive knew it.

She also knew better than to interrupt John Seed when he began a sermon.

“N-n-n-o” Stanford stammered.

_ “Wait for the Lord and he will avenge you… _ ” John hissed in the officer’s face, “I ask you, when do you think he will avenge _ me _ ? When will I be _ worthy _of His vengeance? As a child, after my parents have flayed me to the point of delirium?”

His tongue moved to the quivering face before him and he licked the man’s cheek enticingly. Stanford whimpered, eyes straining at Sweat’s lifeless shape on the ground. Clinging to hope that he might not end up beside him.

“As a young man, after the board of directors each took their turn with me?”

The prisoner inhaled a deep breath through his nose, taking in the scent of _ terror _. His tongue rolled over Stanford’s mouth and his grip on the man’s neck grew stronger. He grinned like a starving man. It had been so many years since he'd tasted the salt of another human, tears of atonement, the slick juices of lust.

“Shoving their starved cocks down my throat, forcing them up my ass, spilling themselves over my naked body, throwing me out into the night, like I was a common streetwalker?”

Olive blushed a little, as John’s eyes briefly passed back to her. She was staying very still, hadn’t even moved from her seat. 

_ I know my place. _

_ It's on my back, with your head between my thighs. _

Stanford was also looking to her, pleading with her to help him. And the realisation upon his face that she had every intention of simply watching him be choked out was a slow, utterly satisfying spectacle. She gave him a cheeky little shrug and chewed with her mouth open, smiling, letting the pink gum cling to her front teeth, like sinew from a bone.

“Aren’t you going to finish taking his statement, Officer?”

She tilted her head towards John.

Stanford screwed his eyes up like a child deep in nightmare. And John laughed at him. It was all too nostalgic, and all too sweet to once again wield the knife.

“Where was I? Ah, yes… maybe he'd send a horde of archangels as you cry out ‘dead man walking’? Perhaps I'd be avenged in Heaven, after you butchered me like a swine in this abattoir?”

A little squeal escaped the officer’s mouth at the thought.

_ Pigs, _Olive thought. All filthy, here in this slaughterhouse, together.

Truly a perfect analogy.

John tightened his grip. Muscles in his arms straining, making those scars where he’d cut himself all the more prominent.

“You see, _ this _ is how it feels. To be abandoned by your God and put at the mercy of his enemies. He’s left you to _ die _ here, and now, against this wall, by the hands of a liar and a murderer. A _ monster. _Here in this cold, soulless place, shivering and begging, with no angelic hand of fate to grant you reprieve.”

The weight of thirty five years of pain glistened in his eyes.

_ “This is what you would do to me _ . So go ahead… _ laugh. _”

Stanford’s face was twitching in fear.

John squeezed harder, lifting the officer from the floor. Unbridled madness finally breaking through.

“_ Laugh, infidel! The false Gods you serve have forsaken you!” _

He howled with laughter.

“Tyranny, subjugation, vanity, _ greed _…”

“I...I’m just-do-doin’-m-job…” Hands clawing up John’s arms. Olive watched the cotton patch taped to his skin peel away under Stanford’s desperate fingernails and drift down to the floor to rest beside the disarmed gun. A small puncture wound lurked beneath.

The loathing across the inmate's face was sharper than the needle that had pierced his flesh.

Olive knew then that there would be no atonement today.

“_ So was I.” _

And she watched Stanford’s skull- pornstar moustache and all- cave in on itself, as John crushed it into the wall repeatedly, grinding the bone into the plaster. Dust billowed into the air and as the dead officer crumpled at John's feet, brains leaking into the carpet.

Now the monarch butterfly stood bloodsoaked, beautiful wings sullied by sin.

“Holy shit…” Olive whispered.

And the hungry red-eyed beast lurking in the corner had been silent for too long.

By luck, incompetence or divine providence.

But now the jaws of hell were _ opening _.

An ear-splitting screech erupted from the walls, as the alarm sounded. And with it came the whoops and cries of a hundred caged men, bloody handed sinners who revelled in the slightest deviation from the monotony of solitary incarceration. The alarm, to them, was a new friend, a forgotten lover, a strange voice in their echo chambers.

To Olive and John, it was a beacon.

“Time to go find the exit, maybe?” 

The Whore of Babylon smoothly released him from his bonds using the stolen keys. The chains rang out as they hit the floor. She let her touch linger a little longer than necessary on his skin, and batted her doe eyes at him. Well, if he was going to cast her as the Bible's most infamous slut, she’d certainly play her part to the letter.

“My life is in your hands, Olive Kestler.” He breathed, low and seductive into her ear, as she picked the lock, and the red-headed imp took a great deal of pleasure in realising that she was his only hope now. Tingles down her neck. Casting the cuffs by the corpses of their masters with a clatter before placing the rabbit’s foot chain over his head. 

It rested against his panting chest, against his broken heart.

“It’s in _ your _ hands, John. I’m the instrument, _ you _ are the artist. You’ve created beauty before. It’s all over your hands, it’s carved into your flesh, it’s _ burned _ into your _ soul _ . It's part of what makes you so fucking _ special. _ Only now, it can burn a little stronger and a little hotter with a bit of fiery redhead gasoline.”

She stepped back from him, so he could take in her full height. See her in all her statuesque magnificence (that's what her Tinder profile read, at least).

“The visitor's entrance is not far. Couple of long corridors. Reception area could prove difficult, but we take _ these- _” The guns felt so right in her hands as she collected them up, along with the keycards. Even though she could tell that the lackadaisical COs hadn't filled the chambers with as many bullets as it could hold. They were unbalanced. Incomplete. Holes at the heart.

Kind of like the two renegades who stood facing each other…

… And _ oblivion _.

“Have you taken a life before?” John weighed the Glock in his hands, and sneered a little at it. It was hardly an elegant weapon. Dented and unloved.

She felt breathless at the prospect.

“I can honestly say that, even for a whore, I’m a virgin in that department.”

He smirked back at her.

“Well, as your lawyer, I can only advise _ against _ murdering police officers. The fruits of your labour won’t be well appreciated and trial by public opinion is _ exhausting _.” 

“You charge by the hour?” She hurried over to her handbag, to retrieve the dictaphone and tuck it into the waistband of her pencil skirt. The rest would weigh her down. _ It's only a knockoff Vuitton anyway. Although the red leather is so fucking cute. _

“By the _ minute _ at this point, sweetheart.”

“Pretty extortionate for a guy who got disbarred-”

“Only in Montana… and Georgia.”

“And _ everywhere-” _

As she turned back to face him, incriminating evidence safely stowed, her unempathetic eyes shifted once again onto the dead officers.

And her ears rang as a sensory overload washed over her.

All those years ago.

As though it were happening again, perfect mimicry of every detail.

_ “Just tell us what happened, Olive. No one's gonna be mad at you.” _

_ “What about your father? Did he hurt you? Did he touch you? Did he hurt anyone else?” _

_ “You don’t have to be afraid Olive.” _

_ “They can’t reach you now. You’re safe.” _

_ “Yes. Safe. You and your mother.” _

"… Olive? _ Olive? _"

She was ripped from her illusions back into the corpse-strewn visitation area.

John was watching her, disinterested, verging on frustrated, a man who could still so easily read people, even after years of solitude, and was no longer surprised by what he saw. He knew disassociation on sight, knew exactly what it felt like. But Olive knew he wouldn’t pry. She couldn’t claim that it was out of concern for her, or that he was playing a long game to ease her into confession and atonement. It was simply that he didn’t _ care_. But here she was nonetheless, and she was going to make every fucking second of it _ matter_. 

Even if the ghosts were whispering.

“Come on-”

She grabbed his hand.

“Let’s go be beautiful together.”

She pulled him towards the exit, out into the administration corridor. Rapidly replaying the route she had taken this morning in her head. How many offices had she passed? She wished she’d counted the doors. Everything was on the ground floor, that she was certain of.

There wouldn’t be any staircases to contend with, no risk of being cornered in an elevator.

Within moments, they were faced with another door.

And a thundering onslaught of guards coming from behind. Exoskeletons of bulletproof plastic, visors and shields and batons, with the buzz of tasers like a swarm of hornets. Olive didn’t even bother to guess how many there were. They were outnumbered. 

The door beside them audibly sealed closed, and Olive imagined every door across the entire expanse of the prison being soldered shut with molten iron.

“Is it an affront to dramatic tension to assume that the keycard will still work with every door?” She mused over her shoulder, keeping track of how many paces there were between them and an indescribably embarrassing ass-kicking. John readied the sliver of plastic, and Olive couldn’t help but wonder if those chewed, brittle nails had once been painted with a sheen of black polish.

The keycard swiped through easily.

And the muses wept.

Barrelling through, they slammed the door shut behind them, and John thrust an elbow into the mechanism. It cracked and sparked after his third attempt. In the corridor ahead, civilian personnel were stepping out to face them, against protocol, armed with nothing but duty and resolution, chairs and lamps, and anything they could get their hands on to throw. Emaciated body fuelled by adrenaline, John pistol whipped the nearest man to him, steel thumping into his temple, and Olive quickly fired her first shot. It ricocheted off the wall and buried itself into the thigh of a white-coated woman who was evidently a doctor.

The stethoscope around her neck caught the light.

Pupils dilating, look up, look down...

“_ Olive, we need to run some tests on you. Is that OK?” _

_ “You’re very thin. Have you always been this pale? How many times did they feed you a day? Are you deficient? Do you and your mom have access to food now?” _

_ “It’s just a needle, Olive. The work of a moment. A slight pinch and it’ll be over.” _

More shots fired and the gun was feverish in Olive’s palm. She cursed that she hadn’t had the forethought to take a class or two, instead of having to watch the bullets embed themselves into the wall. It was almost _ embarrassing- _ sloppy details in what should be her greatest legacy, and they were details that were _sure _to be recounted in any official reports.

John had far better aim. It was only logical, with a brother who was ex-military. _ Ex-brother too now. _He had taken down three opponents within seconds, and briefly abandoned his stolen gun to jab a fourth so hard in the throat, that his windpipe collapsed. 

“_Three _ fucking bullets in a chamber built for _ seventeen _?”

Olive’s wonky aim took out another two administrators, the sorts who stew at a desk making spreadsheets, before the others took off running, valuing their lives, aware that it was a lost cause. The injured administrators sat moaning, clinging to their bloodied limbs, before John took control of Olive’s weapon and swiftly put an end to their misery. Bullet to the back of the head. Point blank. As he had with many a disobedient or inefficient member of Joseph’s flock.

“Execution style. Poetic.”

“Do onto others, darling-”

Without warning, John twinged and gripped at his side. His breath hitched in his throat and he started panting, gulping down the air.

“_ Fuck _…” He hissed through the pain and pulled his palm away from his body

It came away bloody. 

Olive pulled him aside into the next open door- a staff break room free from the gaze of cameras- and moved to quickly unbutton his jumpsuit. Then, without coy blushing or meek hesitation, she lifted up the white undershirt to expose his chest. There it sat, under the faded _ SLOTH _on his sternum.

A scar across his ribs.

A scar that had clearly been stitched by steady hands once. Though now it was weeping, inflamed and swollen, as though it wasn't several years old. It was a miracle the prison hadn’t noticed it.

“What the hell? Did you get _ shanked _?”

John shook his head, wheezing.

“I… I haven't... let it... heal… it’s… it's my _ atonement. _”

“Wait, is this…?”

Olive recalled the medical reports. All public record, released after morbid media curiosity. John had taken a couple of .357 rounds to his right lung on the day of his arrest. Surgeons had been forced to remove the whole organ, so severe was the internal damage. Olive had checked eBay and the deep web for weeks waiting for it to appear on the black market, but had relented to boredom after someone online had pointed out that it was probably tarred and blackened by years of smoking, and not worth anything anyway.

It was a miracle he was still breathing with _ one. _

“You like to poke your prison issue spork in there, or what?

It was a joke, but John groaned and abashedly admitted:

“_ Sometimes _.”

“Oh. Kinky.”

There was a collection of lockers lined up along the break room wall, and it didn't take more than a momentary rummage for Olive to find a spare uniform shirt to shred. Blunt scissors in the staff kitchen. Loose buttons scattered on the floor. Knotting the strips together, aware that she was eating into precious time. Binding his wounded chest, as if it would make any difference. His blood was on her hands, warm and thick. A reminder that under the flesh, the flagellation and the years of self-harm, he was just like her, and she was like him.

“Well, at least you won’t bleed to death before we make it out of here,” She finished her work, tucking the loose end of the makeshift bandage under the binding tightly, before going to stand. The alarm was still singing it’s tuneless melody and they needed to move. They had already wasted enough time hiding, and no doubt more forces were bearing down on them. Waiting in ambush outside the door. 

But John’s arm wrapped around her.

Pulling her body to meet his, as though he were the suave hero of a film noir.

Olive let herself be carried into his embrace.

He pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear, before tracing down her neck, making as though to strangle her in the throes of passion. In the calm before the storm. Together. Scarlet, orange and blue, a flame igniting to burn the world to ashes.

“You know as well as I do, my dear, that we will _ never _get out of here alive.” He breathed in to take in the sugary, strawberry scent of the perfume on her neck, “Let’s make the most of it...”

His hands moved down, down, down onto her waist, feeling the curves of her body through her silk blouse. The lines of her limbs, the fullness of her breasts. Exploring each vertebrae of her spine. Wandering onto the soft cushion of her ass. Olive wondered if he may draw her, tattoo her across his chest with a concoction of pen ink and shampoo and a mechanical pencil for an instrument.

“Seduced me onto death. My sins always did get the better of me.” He murmured, closing those beautiful eyes momentarily, hair falling across his sweat-matted forehead.

She nibbled at his once mauled ear.

“Well, why be virtuous and _ miserable _? Even those schmucks at the Vatican have fun with each other when those conclave doors get closed.”

He laughed softly into her neck.

“You truly are magnificently _ wicked _, Olive Kestler.”

Yelling from close by.

Orders. Formation. Tactics.

Hunters ensnaring rabbits.

“We should go.” Olive moved to a locked cabinet she had spotted hiding in the shadows of the room, “If we get to the control room, which I'm pretty sure is coming up on the left, we can lock all the doors behind us. Maybe de-electrify the fence. Turn off that fucking alarm.” 

It simply took a few well-placed slams with a fire extinguisher to knock the padlock from the cabinet, and soon their weapons (and her pockets and bra) were stuffed with fresh ammunition. Enough to take out any of the holy and unholy creatures in this place alike.

“Hey, I think I went up a cup-size!” She winked at John, before peeking her head out into the corridor again.

… and _ nothing. _

No assault rifles.

No smoke grenades.

No Warden to grab her by the ear like a naughty schoolgirl and slap her on the wrist.

It appeared more like an abandoned hospital wing, walked only by distempered spirits, their steps accompanied by distant residual murmurs of the sick and dying.

As they cautiously made their way down towards the control room, Olive could feel her mother’s hand on her shoulder.

“_You did so well, Olive. Now we never have to go back there. We’re free.” _

_ “Why are you being so quiet? What’s wrong? Why aren’t you happy for me? For us?” _

_ “For Heaven’s sake, Olive! What do you mean you want to go home? There is no home there for us! They’re evil! They’ve got inside your head! Of course… of course, you’ve never known anything else, how could I have been so stupid? It’s OK, my darling, it’s alright. You’ll see someday. Everything I did, I did for you.” _

The control room was overseen by three officers, who spent their days slouching, staring bug-eyed at monitors displaying prisoners scratching their asses for lack of other entertainment. Olive envied them the chance to watch man regress into his base functions, after all his humanity, empathy and individuality has been stripped away. 

_ Maybe I should be a correctional officer? _

After all, a successful prison break would be a magnificently unique item on her resume.

“Excuse me, can you help me?” She pouted, and raised her pitch to squeak like a little girl, and all three officers immediately reached for their firearms. They knew exactly who she was, who she was with, that she was dangerous and reckless and so committed to her suicide mission, that she was capable of any atrocity conceivable. They needed no further prerogative to shoot to kill. 

Public enemy number _ one _. A truly extraordinary honour in this place.

_ No, they haven't even invented my number yet, _Olive fired a round through the throat of the mousy young woman closest to her, before cursing aloud at her shit aim.

She'd been angling for the heart.

Why was she being so goddamn _ imperfect, _ when every moment of her life, being chosen by one collective, one cult, one God after another, insisted to her that she was _ immaculate _ ? 

And the voices rang out again.

Sitting in front of that cop.

_ "Mommy took me away. She says I'll be safe here. That God will be with us, because he wasn't before. Back there. He never was." _

Lies.

All fucking _ lies. _

And oh, how she revelled when she saw the next officer hesitate. Faced with a pretty, rich white girl, in silk and rouge. Falling under her spell. Those innocent eyes. The moment he spent wondering about her college scholarship or whether her father worked for the mayor or if maybe she didn't _ really _know what she was doing, was all it took for hot metal to split his chest open. 

The last woman standing backed away into the control panel, fumbling for everything and nothing. Olive could see her trembling at the sight of John. No doubt she had thought herself safe here in her little secluded haven.

"P-p-please, I- I have a son, he's o-only three-!"

John _ froze. _

He could see the scrawled drawings on her desk- a jungle scene where a child and his mother ran from tigers. A bus, driven by birds through the clouds. Little hearts in every shade of every rainbow scattered around a large red heart that bore the message ‘I lov Mom’. A misshapen play-doh puppy. A Pikachu sticker on her pencil pot. A post-it note with a phone number across it, for a kindergarten in nearby Colorado Springs.

It was no secret that he knew exactly what it was to be a little boy without a mother. Only three years old when he was ripped from his parents. Five when he watched Jacob be dragged away in cuffs. Six when he wondered if he would ever see Joseph again. When he was told that he was beyond saving.

"I... I’m not the _ monster _you think I am."

Slowly, his gun lowered to his side.

“Go.”

The officer doubled over, weeping in relief, before moving towards the door.

“T-than-k y-ou, thank you-”

Olive wasn’t one for _ begging _ . It was demeaning, irritating. What made this woman any different to the other suckers they’d taken down in the corridor? Of the three people in this room, only _ two _had been blessed with divine favour. The other would rat them out the moment she got out of sight.

They’d already come too far to risk it.

“Oh boohoo, bitch!”

Olive spun to face the retreating officer and sent four rounds into her back. The woman’s twitching body went tumbling to the floor, spasming in death where the nerves had been damaged, and didn’t seem to stop. _ Maybe she’ll still be twitching in her open casket. That’ll be fun for the kid to see. Educational. _

John grabbed her wrist, as if to wrestle the gun away from her. And Olive had never seen such fury before, dark clouds were passing over the sky in his eyes, and lighting struck through in a flash of electrifying displeasure.

“Why the fuck did you do that?”

She shrugged.

“Hey, I’m not the one in prison, and even I know that people _ snitch. _ And in this case, snitches don’t just get stitches, but lead in the head. Well, the _ back. _” 

John looked _ venomous _as he moved to reach the controls.

"Be wary of wrath, my dear. It doesn't suit you."

“Oh? I figured it was the perfect accessory for our date tonight.”

He wasn’t buying into the banter this time.

Instead, he was mesmerised by the screens plastered across the walls.

All of the officers were still logged in. Controls for every door, every camera, every alarm and sound system and schedule and prisoner record, medical, psychological, legal, juvenile, were at their fingertips, unsealed. A veritable smorgasbord of possibility. And it was evident from how confidently John moved towards the panel that he had already settled on the sweetest form of chaos on the menu.

"So what's the play, coach?"

“You know, Olive..." He clicked through the floorplans of the penitentiary grounds to find the cell corridor controls, "they always said it was _ Jacob _who would set the sinners free.” The cursor moved to the door release commands and unflinchingly selected 'OPEN' for each and every one of the nearly 400 cells across the facility.

Olive couldn’t tell if the distant chorus of metal doors scraping open was in her imagination.

What wasn’t in her mind was a new alarm, clashing horrendously with the first.

The fresh sound of heavy boots again.

And panicked voices.

Rushing past the control room.

They must have known they were in there, were waiting in ambush.

But the tactical team had turned on their heels and were advancing upon the cell block, now more concerned with the 360 inmates who were suddenly set loose within the facility. Men of the most evil calibre, the faces of unspeakable deeds. Murderers, terrorists, rapists, traitors to the nation.

One religious fanatic and a rogue psychology student apparently could wait.

“Nice to know where we rank in the priorities now.” Olive was a little ruffled by the slight. She didn’t want the rest of her glorious heist to be _ boring. _

“Have no fear, Olive.”

John grabbed a handheld radio and moved the dial on it to switch the frequency. As he held down the button, his voice rang out, amplified by speakers across the room.

“We’ll get what’s coming to us.”

John strutted out into the corridor, head raised to the heavens as he preached into the handheld radio. His voice, now resonant and strong and full of confidence, as it had been all those years ago, blared out of the sound system.

Across the prison, the most deplorable of men were being taken to church.

“Rejoice, brothers! You are released from your bonds! Could it be that God has finally appeared to those who he deems worthy of salvation?”

As he cried out, Olive couldn’t help but see Joseph atop a Montana mountain. Preaching to the flock, bare chest exposed to the elements. At one with the perfection and imperfection of God’s garden. The brothers had always looked so different, yet so similar, and now that grey was beginning to fleck through John’s hair, the resemblance was even more pronounced. 

She practically skipped behind him, twirling and dancing like a maiden druid bearing tribute. Oh, to walk in his footsteps! And soon, the flocks of Eden’s Gate that were gestating across the nation would walk in hers. Read her name in the New Word, of how she kept the dream alive.

What would her epithet read?

Saviour? Liberator? Emancipator?

Like Moses to the Israelites. _ Let my people go! _ And holy fucking shit, was she raining blood and locusts and disease upon the ones who kept these men, God’s chosen, in chains. They deserved nothing more. And she deserved nothing less than exultation.

She was a true prophet of the prophets. Allowing the Seeds and their faith to live on through the very best vessel it could exist within… themselves.

Well, one of them, at least.

“I am one of you, brothers! Held hostage by tyrants, deemed less than human! Stripped of my name, of all that I am, and forced into chains! I am not a prideful man. There are some who thought me conceited. Vain. And I say to them, even the most humble of men cannot suffer degradation eternally! There comes a day when he will rise! Where higher powers will provide! And now let our captors cry out in fear of us, for we are broken from their grasp! They must answer for what they have done! They must atone!”

In the distant cell block, prisoners emerged, bemused yet envigorated, from their cells. They swarmed like lice throughout the corridors, unsure of quite what to do with their new freedom. Their world was a labyrinth, designed they might never truly understand where they were.

“You walk on water too?” a young man with few teeth howled at the speaker, right now appearing as the Voice of God.

“Ain't no God here! We our own gods!”

And though he could not see them, John continued to speak, to spark insurgency within their cold hearts. He could feel their souls, or what was left of them, pulsing through the halls. They were the blood in the veins of this beast that had swallowed so many living things across the years.

“Be masters of your own fate! Set down your gospel in stone and in blood! Fight, my brothers! Fight and die like we were meant to!”

He looked to Olive.

“_Free. _” 

He cast the radio aside, letting it bounce against the wall and skitter to a stop on the ground. The visitor’s reception area was merely metres away. He had no more need for anything in this building.

Olive couldn’t wait to show him the world beyond.

Keycard.

Humming.

Green lights.

And they strode into the almost empty reception area.

Yellowed, like the rest of the administration building, decor like an unlicensed physiotherapist’s office. And upon seeing her appear around the corner, the older man at the desk seemed to suddenly remember that Olive was visiting… and that she was a civilian, _ clearly _caught in the crossfire.

“Sorry ma’am, I need you to-!”

He saw John beside her.

How they moved together, wore the same triumphant air upon their shoulders.

How she raised her gun to aim it between his bespectacled eyes.

“Wait-!”

The receptionist got a bullet to his brain, the first of Olive’s that had hit true. The contents of his skull splattered across his computer monitor, across the frame beside it showing off a young woman in a cap and gown proudly displaying her degree. He went toppling backwards and what was left of his head went colliding into the edge of his desk before hitting the unswept beige tiles.

“Woooooooohoooooooooo!” God, that rush from the bullseye was _ worth the wait. _ She punched the air and her arms flailed a little out of control. This was better than fucking _ Christmas. _“John, did you see that? Did you see where I got him? Right between the eyes!”

He ignored her.

He was walking towards the door, enraptured by the light coming through the glass.

He could see the road.

Patches of grass.

Birds and ants and snakes.

“Olive… look.” His voice was quiet.

She went to stand next to him, and smiled. Like a mother with a toddler.

“You wanna go see?” 

And he nodded, speechless.

In seconds, they were clear of the visitor's entrance doors, and Olive could see the wonder scrawled across John's face, entranced by temperatures above that of a freezing concrete 7x12ft cell, and air that hadn't been endlessly recycled through a decades old filtration system. It was as though he'd forgotten that the outside world was something more than a distant memory.

She could also see heavily armed officers now standing by her car, peering into the windows. Staring and pointing down at her copy of Joseph’s Word.

“Well, there goes my plausible deniability. And our ride.” Olive cooed at John, who wasn’t even listening, just staring up at a passenger jet yawning through the sky above them. Slowly she took his hand and drew his gaze back down to the ground.

Back to _ her _.

“It’s time to go now, John. Time for that leap of faith.”

He took a deep breath and nodded again.

“A disgraced Baptist and the Mother of Whores. We are truly abominations of the earth. Now…”

She kissed his cheek before whispering into his ear.

“... let’s take our sins to the sky.”

And she looked out towards the road, where a single car was passing, a speck on the horizon. The fence was still electrified, in their haste, they hadn't switched it off. But this was the freefall. Here stood the cliff, red sand instead of white chalk, but still a long way down. No wind, only stillness. No water for a body to break upon, only hopelessness to break their spirits.

But it was time to _ jump _.

Their feet pounded as they began to run towards the fence.

Dust flew up behind them.

John was faster than her, several feet ahead.

Olive threw a glance back at the terracotta-coloured cube city, up at the titanium guard towers that made the air ripple with the heat that reflected from them. It slowed her pace, but she wanted every detail burned into her memory. Every speck of colour from this colourless place squirreled away so that she may recount… well, _ exaggerate … _ it all later. Warden Aubree was atop the roof, screaming at her subordinates. Olive caught the hawkesque glare of the gorgon and thanked her lucky stars that she didn’t turn to stone with black-clad snipers taking aim at her.

Oh… _ shit. _

They were going to shoot. It was inevitable. The closer they got to the road, the closer Aubree got to a tribunal and being told to clear her desk. There was no way the woman was going to let them get away _ alive _. 

Snipers, aligning like lunar objects. _ Sunny with a chance of meteor showers_, Olive laughed, as she realised that there were _ seven _heads peering over the edge of the building down at them.

Just as providence had predicted.

“A beast with seven heads arises!” She called after John, and he turned to smile at her as ten black SUVs, tinted windows like demon eyes, skidded into formation along the fence. Horns blaring in uniformity, warning the escapees to stop in their tracks.

“Can you hear it, Olive?”

"Aubree’s shrieking? Yeah, it’s _ hilarious. _"

A smile shone across his face, with all the hope and wonder of a young boy.

“My _ parents. _ They've _ gone. _” 

Olive almost checked behind her for the corpses of Saul and Ruth Duncan, left strewn in their wake, before remembering Aubree’s indelicate psychological evaluation.

_ He’ll probably be waving goodbye to them when they strap him to that gurney. _

John certainly wasn’t waving to them.

He wasn’t even watching where he was going.

His tear flecked eyes were taking in the clouds.

“Their voices! Silenced!" He yelled, running ever faster, "For the first time, since the night I silenced them myself! Out here, in the sunlight, in the air! No concrete chapel to persecute me in, endless acclamations of how beautiful it is to suffer! Just... _quiet._ _Quiet. _Is this peace? Is this _happiness-_?”

A spray of blood came bursting from John’s chest as a bullet hit it's mark.

He went crashing onto the honeyed sand. Ventricular severance, Olive guessed, as she felt her own shoulder erupt with burning pain and she went tumbling after him. Irreparable damage to the heart. Or maybe it was his other lung? She hit the ground beside him. Shattered shoulder blade and collar bone. The dust beneath their faces was warmed by the morning sun and clung to their sweating pores, embracing their bodies like children to a mother.

“_ FUCK- _” Her screams echoed out across the compound. She gripped a hand to where the metal had split her open. She’d never felt pain like it, not even when she’d burned her fingers with candles for kicks, or tried her hand at five finger fillet. 

John coughed thickly and rolled onto his back.

Scarlet was pooling in the corners of his lips, trailing out of his nostrils, running down his chin. He gurgled, choking on what was left of his singular lung. Punctured. Drowning on dry land. The blood and scraps of flesh pumped effortlessly out of the hole in his chest and Jacob’s rabbit foot charm that still hung around his neck was no longer a sandy brown, but a meaty red.

He had minutes, seconds more likely.

The blood was soaking into the sand around him.

Halo for a martyr.

She heard a shriek of manic laughter burst from her lips, squashing down the agony radiating from her shoulder. It all seemed so morbidly exquisite, the Baptist of Eden sprawled out beside her under the Colorado sun, dying side by side as though they were tragic lovers in a Renaissance mural. Daubed on a chapel ceiling.

After all, what was the earth but the ceiling of Hell below?

And if these murals did indeed reflect truth, Olive knew that truth must be spoken. A last reaction for her thesis, a final betrayal that pressed salt into his fatal wounds.

“Oh J-oh-n, bo-ld a-and b-br-ave...”

His clouding eyes turned to look at her as she sang, and Olive had wondered if he’d ever looked so _ happy. _ She pressed down on her wound, trying to stem the blood and gave him a resigned smirk.

“I- I t-think now's the- the ti-me to m-mention... Jacob?”

Another spark of hope in the dying man's eyes that his brother may yet still live.

But the Whore of Babylon giggled.

Held her tongue firm, poised to break his heart.

“I never met the guy."

She hissed in pain, which somehow became laughter once more.

"He didn’t ask me _ shit. _”

John Seed said nothing.

Did he care? Was he surprised? Could he break any further? Olive couldn’t tell, his face was more lifeless by the second. John's hand moved to grip the counterfeit charm around his neck, squeezing it a little with what strength he had left. Trying to feel close to anything that even resembled his family. And she reached a shaking hand down into the waistband of her skirt, to fling the ever recording dictaphone at him, hearing the machinery within it whirr, as it clamoured for his last words, his final breath, the rattle in his chest.

A silvertongue tarnished beyond repair.

He looked at it and an oddly genuine, strong laugh escaped him. His face contorted in pain, and finally, a quiet, wet whimper bubbled up his throat, before each muscle relaxed. Settled. Fell. And he turned back to look at the endless horizon above him, where somehow the moon was peeking through the blue daylight. Olive watched his ribs try to rise and fall three more times, straining under the weight of life, before he stilled, eyes wide at nothing.

Dead.

The Baptist of Eden.

Little brother.

Baby brother.

Who had suffered so much, suffering no more.

Olive recalled Jacob's final words, printed neatly across the Los Angeles Times.

Maybe the Soldier really was waiting on the other side, ready to embrace his family… no matter if resting soft among the clouds, or boiling alive in a pit of human excrement, deep in the bowels of Hell, as John had thought. Maybe they truly were together. Reunited forever, never again to be torn apart by abusive parents or social workers or trigger happy cops.

Someone was approaching.

Running towards her.

There were suddenly two fingers pressed into John's vein laced neck, although his glazed, unseeing eyes told the whole story. A voice, strangely distant, stated:

“Prisoner deceased.”

And Olive felt her hands be roughly jarred behind her back. The skin around the fresh bullet hole in her shoulder tore, and pain slashed through every inch of her. She didn’t scream again. She knew what her lawyer would say, if she’d had a lawyer. _Silence_ _and only silence. _Well, fuck that. She was going to savour _every moment_ of how she’d screwed over the most secure penitentiary in the country. Cuffs snapped onto her wrists and she was pulled to her feet to stare a steel-faced Warden Aubree in the eye.

“_ Shit… _SHIT-” Aubree was taking in the scene. A maximum security prisoner, dead in the dirt. An alarm that shouldn’t even begin to peep, screaming across the valley. A trail of bodies, each with a family to be informed. A mound of paperwork. Funerals to attend. Inquiries to testify at.

She pointed a bony finger into Olive’s irreverant face.

“The moment you walked into this place, I knew you were trouble,” Aubree spat at her, the embarrassment of the whole debacle flushed into her cheeks, professionalism thrown by the wayside. Her hair was dishevelled, her makeup slightly sweated off around the edges.

“Oooh ouch” Olive pretended to wince dramatically, humouring through the _ agony _, “Taylor Swift wants her royalties. Wouldn’t want to go to jail for copyright infringement-”

Aubree slapped her across the face.

Hard.

A slap full of all the hatred of the earth.

And for once in her life, Olive Kestler was speechless.

Freckles stinging with failure.

Soul singing with exhilaration.

Staring down at the lifeless husk of a saint, where the flies were settling on his cheeks.

Free for what, unless the Archangel Raguel himself came to defend her, was probably the last time in her entire life.

“Consider yourself under arrest,” Aubree was harping, “and with God as my fucking witness, I’m going to see you _ suffer _ for what you’ve done, you deceitful little _ bitch _. Maybe then you won’t find it so funny.”

Olive could only smile, and chew her gum loudly.

Tutti-frutti now tasteless.

And as she was dragged back towards the prison, her rights being mumbled into her blood speckled ears, she could already hear the media calling her name- _ Olive! Olive! Olive! _ See the flashing lights upon the courthouse steps. Watch the gavel fall and the faithful on their knees, praising a new era of Eden's Gate. Calling their martyr’s name.

Their new _ Herald’s _name.

Oh, and she knew _ exactly _what it was going to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's that! I never had any real intentions of a happy ending for this hahahaha, you guys know I love a bit of angst! I may revisit Olive in the future, I just have so much fun writing her, but I'm not entirely sure what'd I'd do with her at this point.
> 
> I'd like to thank you once again for taking the time to read and leave kudos and comments! It means the world and really encourages me to keep going!
> 
> Anyway, you can find me on Tumblr at unclefungusthegoat! Please do also check out my other words on here! I have Icarus and Styx (a Carmina Rye meets Ghost John Seed fic), as well as some short one-shots!
> 
> Take care,  
Chloe x

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [John chapter nineteen, verse thirty](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20839304) by [finefeatheredfriend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/finefeatheredfriend/pseuds/finefeatheredfriend)


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